Children Make Beautiful Corpses
by x-mas
Summary: Mass crossover pie! The bad guys are more than a little upset with always loosing to clueless do gooders who really shouldn't be able to even touch them, its time they fought back...loosing is not an option.
1. Prologue

**Authors Notes: **If you want to fully understand this fanfiction I strongly recommend that you read these notes, however, if you're happy to let it wash over you without thinking about the timeline or things like that, scroll down and get reading! Now on with the notes!

**Timeline:** This is set mainly in the Gundam Wing universe just after the end of the war...which would make it around A.C. 196 but we're not going to get too bogged down with actual dates. Everythings preety much been shoved forward a few hundred years so that the events in all the other programs/animes etc just happen alongside the events in Gundam Wing. Theres one exception to that rule, but that will get explained when it pops up, the finer details of the changes I've made to various timelines will also be explained when they actually turn up.

**Who's Involved:** This is a mass crossover. For definite it includes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Night World, Vampire Diaries, Gundam Wing, Stargate, Angel Sanctuary, Torchwood, Death Note, Blade and various Kelly Armstrong books. It will most likely also contain: Gravitation, Prince of Tennis and Ouran High School Host Club. The following may turn up, but its not for definite, this is just prior warning in case they do: Full Metal Panic and Harry Potter.

To make this easier for people who aren't familiar with all of these, at the end of each chapter I will list any new characters and where they come from.

**Warnings: **This is basically a story about a war, so theres gonna be bad languages and it just might get gory. Also, there will be same sex pairings in this, if you don't like it, I'm not forcing you to read it.

**Acknowledgements: **I need to say a massive massive thank you to Jess, my most amazing friend who is both my proof reader and resident trouble shooter. She hears all my ideas and makes sure they all make sense and forces me to fill in all the holes in my plots and timelines. Thank you!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of it, its all borrowed.

**Edit: Extra note: **Please stick around till chapter 3 before you decide if you want to read this or not. The first two chapters were written under the influence of drugs, sleep deprivation and the sixth form study room. In chapter four, there are angels! Please do stick around till then.

I think thats all the notes needed for now, so lets get started!

Prologue 

Hunter Redfern was pissed off. He'd always prided himself on being one of the most evil beings on the planet, always there, in the background of the major events of the last few centuries, revelling in as well as shaping the destruction that humanity has indulged in since its creation. He'd quickly discovered how easy it was to satisfy his need for pain, suffering and destruction simply by allowing human history to take its natural course. The opportunities always presented themselves, without fail, all that humanity needed to keep Hunter fully entertained, was the occasional push in the right direction. Once the ideal situation had been created, a war, a revolution, genocide etc Hunter could sink back into obscurity and fulfil all his darkest fantasies without anyone taking the least bit of notice. A world war for example, rather eclipses the disappearance of a few poor city girls, whose lives passed with even less recognition their deaths. During a revolution, it is expected that people are killed, mutilated or just vanish off the face of the earth. Aside from all that Hunter could do personally during these periods of war and general conflict, there were other good things about them. Humans dieing, millions of them, and anything that resulted in less humans was magnificent in Hunters opinion. So he was understandably upset when he realised that he'd missed the latest war.

Yes. Hunter had managed to miss a war that had included the whole world and the colonies as well. A war of such magnitude that it made both previous world wars look like playground squabbles, a truly glorious war, the kind of thing that Hunter had only ever dreamed about, and he'd missed it. He blamed it entirely on his recent strict policy of ignoring all humans and their affairs in favour of a nomadic, hermit like existence travelling around the small towns of the world that still allowed for quick and easy pickings without requiring him to be in contact with humans for any prolonged period of time. He had in fact, spent a large amount of time in Australia and Siberia, the first never featured greatly in any type of conflict and the second was filled with a people who had no real government and meandered along without concerning themselves with things that occurred beyond their immediate horizon. Therefore it was hardly surprising that news of this war hadn't reached him till he took a trip back to the USA, where he had lived a great deal of his life and was surprised to find them in the middle of huge celebrations.

Hunter was aware of several festivals that were celebrated across the entirety of the country, but what he found on this visit didn't match his memories of these in the slightest. Firstly, none of the festivals he could remember were celebrated at that time. Secondly, they were mostly family affairs whereas this one seemed to be crossing that particular barrier. Finally, in the celebrations he remembered there were always miserable non-participants, but on this occasion every seemed universally happy. It puzzled him, puzzled him sufficiently to seek further information from a passer by who seemed sober enough to engage in a coherent conversation. The passer by was very helpful, once he'd been assured that Hunter wasn't crazy, drunk or suffering from a sever head injury that had resulted in amnesia, and had been perfectly happy to fill Hunter in on the important points related to the war. He was so helpful Hunter let him go unharmed.

Since that conversation, just under a week previously, Hunter had had to indulge in many killings in an attempt to lessen his intense anger, disappointment and embarrassment at having missed out. Unfortunately, it hadn't worked and he had changed tactics. Sinking into pathetic self-pity, even though he would have rather killed himself than admitted it. He sat in the comfortable arm chair in the cluttered living room of the apartment that he had commandeered from a little old lady after helping her carry her shopping up the stairs. That little juxtaposition of hurting and helping had cheered him up minutely for at least half an hour, but now the self-pity was back with vengeance and he was sitting in the armchair and wallowing. How had he, one of the supreme evils of the friggin' universe ended up in this situation? He should have been in the thick of it, watching, prodding and getting his fill of blood and gore. He should at this point have been wallowing in blood, not self-pity!

With a snarl of frustration he jumped to his feet and started to pace up and down, which was more of a challenge than it sounds as almost every piece of available space, was covered with some article of furniture. Briefly he wondered how people managed to live in such claustrophobic environments, personally he needed space, spending day in day out in such an enclosed space would have made him even more homicidal than he already was, which would be bad for anyone with a pulse. Actually, considering just how frustrated and angry Hunter was at that moment, everything with a pulse was in serious danger anyway so it really didn't matter too much.

As he paced, he plotted, or at least he tried to. He had to compensate, there was no way round it. Somehow he had to make himself feel evil again, he was feeling so emasculated by this, it was almost physically painful. The obvious course of action was to come up with and then flawlessly execute some scheme or other that the general population of this pathetic planet would consider evil and despicable. For someone who had made these sorts of schemes his profession this shouldn't have been at all difficult. Distressingly enough, Hunter was running a little low on inspiration. All great artists have this problem, he told himself, they all run into blocks now and again, no need to worry, you'll come up with something eventually.

Hunter's main problem was pride. If he hadn't had pride, he'd simply have settled for a plan he'd already carried out once, probably one that had been thwarted and therefore he would have know what could go wrong and it would have succeeded and he would easily have gotten his fill of death and destruction. Sadly, Hunter had pride and he refused to try the same tactic twice, that would mark him out as an amateur and that was unacceptable. He could not be lower than the best, which was the one thing he was certain about. Except he couldn't think of anything that was at all suitable, his mind just wouldn't focus. Instead of thinking about huge scales of destruction, he just kept fantasising about the simplest acts of violence. A hundred times he saw his thin fingers slide round a fragile neck and squeeze, a thousand times his teeth sank deep into that same neck…there was nothing fancy…nothing special, his creativity was utterly gone.

Disgusted he left the flat. To take an inspirational walk would be one way of describing his intention, practise would be another, and more appropriate way. The area in which he had made his home was ideal for practise. It was a good-sized town, just big enough to have a good part of town, a bad part of town and a part that wasn't either. Just small enough to never be recognized nationally or internationally, the sort of place that would have to see a massacre to get into the news. He'd settled into the part of it that was set neatly between the good and the bad, a five minute walk up the road took him to large houses, posh restaurants and up market shopping, a five minute walk down the same road took him to run down bars, dilapidated houses and a meal on every street corner.

Today he felt like the lesser challenge offered by the more up market part of town and so he headed up the road. As always Hunter enjoyed the effect he had on people by simply passing by them. Vain would not be the right word to describe him, he was above the pettiness of that particular emotion, no, again it was pride and only pride that made him enjoy having all eyes on him. He was fully aware that he was handsome, perhaps not in the traditional sense of the word, but certainly everyone who looked at him was forced to acknowledge that he was exceptionally good to look at. Stupid humans, they only had to take one look at his blood red hair, golden eyes and unmistakeably aristocratic features to be utterly entranced. When your looks are impressive enough to hypnotise everyone who sees you, they are most definitely something to be proud of and it would almost be a crime not to enjoy the effect they cause. At least, this was Hunters opinion on the subject and to disagree with him was a fundamentally bad idea.

Hunter's mood had been improved considerably by the time darkness was falling and he reached the main hub of the good part of town. It wasn't much when compared to major towns and cities, a good-sized square with the obligatory fountain at its centre surrounded by a small piece of grass clogged with too many flowers that forced their sickly sweet scent into the air making it almost unpleasant to breathe. Not that anyone would ever say that, they were flowers, they were nice, their down sides must be ignored. Bars, restaurants and shops, all of them respectable, welcoming and friendly, surrounded the square. It was an idyllic setting, almost irritatingly so from Hunters perspective. He preferred his towns without the aura of eerie perfection, but this one had its advantages.

The main advantage was obvious as he crossed the square at a leisurely pace, heading for his favourite bar on the opposite side. Everyone he passed acknowledged him with a smile, no one eyed him suspiciously or went out of their way to avoid him, it made him chuckle softly to himself. Trust. This town was disgustingly saturated with trust, the people had so little experience with crime and the brutal realities of life that they were almost childlike in their naïve trust of anyone and everyone. It would have taken him pulling a machine gun on these people to make them fear him, no; he would probably have to shoot a few people before there was real fear. Sickening, as it was, the amount of nice vibes in the atmosphere quickly made Hunter nauseous, it did make his life much easier.

He reached the bar; he favoured it because it was darker than the rest, went inside and immediately selected his target. He always found his target on the first casual sweep of the bar, he would only move to another target if something went drastically wrong with the first. She was sitting at a small table in the corner, alone, separate from everyone else, probably waiting for someone. She stood out to Hunter because of her hair, it was the colour of it really, it was blue, not in an unnatural dyed way, it was clearly her natural hair colour but it was also defiantly blue. Her eyes were also unusual, almost purple in colour, large and they sparkled with cheeky intelligence. She wasn't exactly pretty, but you could enjoy looking at her.

He strode over to her table and sat down confidently on the chair opposite her, fixing his disarming, charming and trustworthy smile to his face. "All alone?"

She jumped, having been lost in her own world, and then blushed red with embarrassment frowning to herself at having been caught out like that, as the handsome stranger opposite her chuckled lightly at her reaction. She wasn't often out in bars like this, her idea of fun really wasn't sitting in a crowded, smoke filled bar for hours on end, she much preferred actually doing something active, a sport, a walk or just messing around in a park. Her friend, Duo, had bullied her into this outing and now he was well over an hour late, she was furious. She had no idea of what she should do, now that she was confronted with a handsome young stranger. "I'm waiting for a friend." She managed to say, hoping that this would be sufficient and he would leave her alone.

"It's a shame to sit alone on a night like this, I hope you'll allow me to keep you company. My name is Hunter."

Her eyes widened slightly as he extended a hand across the table to her, still smiling. Automatically she took it, it was only polite, "Hilde." she replied, thinking to herself that it couldn't hurt to sit with him, he might have been quite a bit older than her, but she was relatively confident in her ability to knee people in the balls if they crossed her. After all, Duo had abandoned her, if he arrived to find her sitting with such a handsome stranger it might just make him a little jealous and that was the least that he deserved.

"Unusual name, suits you," he replied casually, staring intently at her, making her feel a little uncomfortable under the intense scrutiny. She really wasn't sure what to make of him, he appeared very friendly, charming but not in a sleazy way that implied he was after more than a casual conversation. Actually, he seemed a little bored, though he was smiling his eyes were almost emotionless and his voice was a little cold and careless.

"Are you with anyone?" She asked carefully, hoping that this would prompt him to reveal something that would help her to understand him a little more

"I wasn't. Now though, I'm with you." Hilde almost snorted with laughter at that, a less intelligent girl would probably have blushed and giggled at the possible innuendos of that phrase, but Hilde was not one of these girls and to her, it just sounded stupid.

Tipping her head to one side and preparing a witty comment in her mind, she looked up so she could look him straight in the eye as she informed him how ridiculous he had just managed to sound. What she was about to say vanished from her mind the minute their eyes met, everything vanished from her mind, all she was aware of was his eyes. For the first time she realised that they were gold in colour, and the colour was liquid, moving and swirling round the pupils, which were darker than any she'd ever seen before. Hilde couldn't look away, for some reason, she had to remain focused on him, on his eyes, because that was what he wanted and the most important thing for her was to make sure she did exactly what he wanted.

She was lost from that moment on. There was nothing she could have done to save herself. It wasn't strictly hypnosis, there was no need for anything that fancy, it was a power Hunter had possessed for many years, all he needed was for his victim to look into his eyes and if he wished it, they would do whatever it was he wanted. He thought of it as mind control on the most basic level, the link was easy to break and only really worked when the person didn't consider him a threat, but it was useful when it came to getting his victims away from crowded areas quickly and efficiently.

Hilde followed him out onto the street without any hesitation when he suggested they go back to his house. She would have done anything he asked, anything to please him, she thought dreamily, jumped off a bridge, swum across the Atlantic Ocean, anything.

Hunter paused in front of an alleyway, "Shortcut," he said lightly drawing her into it, she wouldn't have been able to protest even if she'd wanted to or been capable of it. He didn't have to take her far, the alley bent slightly and they were quickly out of sight of the street. He stopped again, turned to her letting the pleasant smile slip away to be replaced by his customary smirk.

Hilde's smile faded, suddenly she couldn't remember why she'd thought it was a good idea to leave the bar with him, "Why have we stopped?" she asked, puzzling over the why she'd so desperately wanted to please this strange man she'd only know for half an hour. He took a step towards her and she stepped back automatically, she was still mainly confused, but the fear was starting to rise, an instinctive fear crawling up from her stomach. As her back touched the wall, the fear succeeded in pushing the confusion out of her mind and her breath quickened.

"What are you doing?" she tried to sound strong, glancing around stupidly for help even though logically she knew there wouldn't be anyone nearby to help her.

He smiled nastily, brushing her hair off her neck, "Feeding," he whispered pausing to allow her to understand the implication of these words before he sank his teeth into her neck.

Hilde knew then that she was going to die, it wasn't a panicked thought, it was a calm, rational, realisation accompanied by a fear so complete it totally paralysed her. She almost dared to hope that Duo would come and save her with the impeccable timing that he was sometimes capable of displaying, but it didn't happen, she closed her eyes and hoped it would be quick.

Her blood tasted good, the young ones always did, the young pretty ones especially. She didn't scream, or fight, this was not an exciting kill, this one had been all about skill and those were just as valuable, if not quite as exhilarating. He drained all her blood; his earlier self-pity had made him hungry and he wasn't about to be disturbed, he could allow himself a good, peaceful meal.

He became aware that there was another person in the alleyway only as he dropped her body to the floor. Strange, he should have heard them approaching, strange again that they had not tried to intervene. Slowly, preparing to fight, to kill, if it was necessary, he turned to face the figure.

What he saw was a little surprising; he'd been expecting to see some sort of creature, another vampire perhaps or a shape shifter, something that he could recognise as being something other than human. Instead, this person who had succeeded in sneaking up on him appeared to be exactly that, human. He was of average build and height, with brown hair and cool blue eyes, which were not at all shocked at what they'd just witnessed. His one distinguishing feature was an ugly scar on his face, Hunter catalogued it quickly, so that he would recognise the face instantly if he were ever to see it again.

"Hunter Redfern." The man's voice was bored, so much so that it almost didn't sound like a question.

After a long pause it became clear to Hunter that nothing else was going to happen until he acknowledged what the man was saying, he was reluctant to respond, he didn't want to be playing on anyone else's terms than his own and he was almost entirely certain that by playing along with this, that was exactly what he was doing. However he was curious, this human had succeeded in sneaking up on him, there had to be a reason behind that and he wanted to know it was, he was willing to sacrifice some of his control to find out, at least for now.

"Yes. I am Hunter Redfern."

"My master wishes to speak with you." this was accompanied by a slight smirk, "He has a proposal for you to consider. He wishes for your co-operation in a certain matter. He feels that the human race has dominated this planet long enough. If you are interested to hear what he has to say, there will be a meeting with other interested parties three days from now. Instructions as to where will be delivered to you on the morning of that day." He raised his eyebrows as if to ask silently if Hunter had taken in the short speech.

"Hang on. Your master? Who is your master? And how…?" Hunter trailed off the man was gone. Literally in the blink of an eye the man had vanished without a trance.

Hunter frowned in annoyance. It wasn't just annoying that the man had managed to appear and disappear without Hunter being able to see how; it was annoying that to satisfy his curiosity he would most defiantly have to attend this meeting.

* * *

Ok, so heres our little character list for this chapter:

Hunter Redfern-L. J. Smiths Night world

Hilde-Gundam Wing

Messanger-Kelly Armstrong

Please review and let me know what you think!


	2. WTF?

**Authors Notes: **Darn, posted this in a rush at school and forgot to do all the fine tuning. Stupid stupid me. Sorry!

Ok, Buffy set after Series 5, but Buffy didn't die. Buffy uber evil takes the form of its minion Caleb. Anya and Tara aren't around. Spike gets his soul in between seasons 5 and 6 instead 'cause Buffy doesn't die and rejects him.

Treize is a little bit psycho in this. I'm aware that origional Trieze wouldn't be involved in these kinds of evil scemes.

Oh and a massive thanks to Jessie for proof reading and to her and Cat for helping me write the prophecy.

Onwards!

* * *

Chapter 1 

Many things could be considered bad omens, earthquakes, floods, draughts, swarms of locusts and plagues are all accepted as signs of an impending apocalypse. On a smaller scale, traffic lights on red all the way to work, road works, coffee spilt on your white shirt and a broken elevator, are all accepted as signs of the day ahead being a bad one. Your average person doesn't get overly concerned when nothing bad is happening; in fact they would consider this to be the ideal state of affairs and wouldn't really question it. Rupert Giles was not your average person and therefore the fact that nothing was happening was of great concern to him. He'd been living on the hell mouth for several years now, the hell mouth was a place where bad things happened. Everything that happened there was a bad thing. Nothing good happens just a few meters above the entrance to hell, past experience had taught him this; past experience had also taught him that when things were quiet, it was inevitable that something unspeakably bad and evil was stirring. It was inevitably a sign that soon they would be involved in yet another life threatening, poorly planned (in his opinion anyway) attempt at saving the world from imminent destruction.

Giles sipped his tea, letting his eyes wander over the pages of the old book in his hands, not really reading it as he knew its contents practically by heart, a fascinating description of the history of the forming of the Watchers Council, he really should get Buffy to read it at some point, and as he pretended to read, he mused on the possible causes of the suspicious calm that had descended on Sunnydale. There were of course several obvious options, some Lord of the Vampires come to do battle with the ultimate Vampire Slayer, a supreme evil demon rising from hell to take over the world, a sect of evil monks dabbling in dark magic beyond their control, perhaps even a God with a particular grudge against humanity, all were possible. Yet, none of these really appealed to Giles. A Vampire Lord would have lead to restless vampires, a demon would have had the same effect, the effect of monks would have been immediate and Gods were rarely subtle.

"Vampire kill, definitely." Buffy's cheerful tone interrupted his musings as she bounced through the door to the Magic Box accompanied by the sound of the bell, "No question."

"Will she be coming back?" he asked, barely interested, watching her settle at the round table in the centre of the room.

"Nah, blood was all gone. She's definitely dead. Nothing special."

Giles frowned; he'd almost hoped that the discovery of the body of a young girl would have lead them to something slightly more interesting than a standard vampire kill, a ritual killing perhaps or even some kind of interesting demon.

"God Giles, I never thought you enjoyed saving the world so much."

"It's not a trivial matter Buffy, you know as well as I do that when things are quiet its almost always an indication of bad things to come." Typically, just as Giles was starting out on a lecture/series talk of some kind, the members of the gang most likely to disrupt his serious talk and cause him great annoyance arrived.

"Uh-oh, Giles is using serious voice, what did you do Buffy?" Xander, the supreme king of disruption asked cheekily as he joined Buffy at the table, smiling broadly and giving the distinct impression that he knew exactly how much that question would irritate Giles. Some people thought he genuinely didn't realise how stupid and annoying some of the things he said were, but his closest and oldest friend Willow knew better, Xander was a lot smarter than he acted and as always it made her smile as she quietly slid into the seat next to him, eyes fixed on Giles face to enjoy the effects Xanders entrance had had.

"Giles thinks I'm not taking the suspicious calm seriously enough," was Buffys flippant response, almost causing Giles to roll his eyes.

"Sometimes I really wonder how we've survived this far with such a carefree attitude. It must be dumb luck." Giles was worried and therefore was not in the mood to be teased; at times like this he was prone to snapping and growling, so no one really paid much attention to him.

"Giles has a point," Willow, the eternal peacemaker decided to step in, "Quiet normally leads to bad stuff."

Xander opened his mouth to comment on that, but was helpfully interrupted by the door swinging open and the youngest member of the Scooby gang almost falling into the shop, staggering under the weight of an enormous cardboard box, so instead he opted for an innocent question. "What's in the box Dawny?"

"I don't know. The delivery man asked me to take it in." she replied, dropping it heavily onto the table, forcing all those sitting round it to jump back as it shook violently.

Giles brightened visibly at the sight of the box, "My books."

"Books?" Willows ears pricked up with excitement.

"Books?" Xander's voice held far less enthusiasm.

"Books? Yay, its not like you've got enough, big, old, boring books." Buffy's bitterness appeared to be born from years of Giles attempting to force her to read just such books.

Giles simply glared, "These are very important books," he explained patiently, "From a very significant collection held in a library in Egypt. This box contains some of the earliest written records of many mythologies, from all over the world. Its really quite fascinating."

There were many amused glances traded as Giles started to open the box with an enraptured expression on his face as though the content of the box was more precious to him than anything else in the world. Just as he pulled the top layer of tissue wrapping off the books, Dawn's hand snuck under his guard and extracted a hefty volume, which sprayed dust, and scraps of paper everywhere as she opened it at its centre, "There aren't even any cool pictures!"

"Do you mind!" Giles growled, outraged, snatching the book back and clutching it to his chest protectively, "This is one of the most valuable books you will ever see, I will not have you treating it with such disrespect!"

"Sorry."

Giles simply glared in response, lifting the box and moving it to the shop counter out of reach of any more grabby hands. Smiling sympathetically at him, Willow stood, "Come on guys, we got places to be and Giles wants to be alone with his books."

Giles almost sighed with relief as they departed. He enjoyed their company, of course he did and he loved them all dearly, however, he did not appreciate it when people persisted in not taking him seriously and the abuse of his books always put him in a bad mood, so he was justified in being glad to see the back of them. He turned the book in his hands over a few times to check for damage and was very glad to see it seemed to be unscathed. It was one of the books he had been most looking forward to getting; it was a collection of prophecies, compiled by a Babylonian philosopher shortly before the fall of Babylon. Giles had always been fascinated by prophecies, they almost always came true but often not in the way they were expected to, that was interesting in itself but his main interest lay in why some prophecies were accurate and some weren't. One person could create several prophecies, but not all of them would ever come into being and that was fascinating.

He would dearly have loved to start reading it straight away, but the care of his books was far more important, so he controlled his longing and set about unpacking the other books in the box. It would be a few hours before he allowed himself to sit down and begin reading.

* * *

Hunter was surprised. Just as the bizarre messenger had told him, an envelope containing a set of directions dropped through his door exactly three days after their encounter. He suspected the same messenger had delivered it, as there had been no sign of whoever had pushed it through the letterbox when he'd yanked the door open hoping to get some more details.

Muttering angrily to himself, he slammed the door shut, ripped open the envelope and pulled out a sheet of heavy, yellowed paper, it was either very old or hand made he decided before reading the writing.

It told him in easy to follow, concise language how to get to a remote location a long way from the small town where he was living. This prompted further angry muttering, but without further hesitation Hunter set out.

He was familiar with the phrase curiosity killed the cat and was seriously hoping that it would not apply to his curiosity on this particular occasion. There was a very great possibility that this was a trap of some kind and that by going to this place he was going to his destruction and that worried him more than he liked to admit. He had faith in his ability to defend himself, but that faith was no longer quite as total as it once had been, the near miss when his Grandson had tried to destroy him was still relatively fresh in his mind and he was now more aware than ever that he was not indestructible, he could be killed.

These worries circled round his head throughout the entire journey, which lasted well over six hours, and by the time he arrived in the area of sparse woodland he'd been directed to he was thoroughly sick of them. He was almost glad when he spotted the familiar form of the messenger lounging against a tree, eyes lazily scanning the forest for anyone approaching. A crooked smile slipped onto Hunter's face, his legs bent slightly, his entire body seemed to shrink slightly, and carefully he slid in-between the trees approaching in complete silence.

The messenger didn't know Hunter was there until he found himself pinned against the tree he'd been leaning on with two cold, white hands wrapped around his throat rapidly applying more pressure than was strictly comfortable. Hunter smiled wickedly, extremely pleased to have control, revelling in the knowledge that he could end this beings life in seconds, the feeling of power that knowledge gave was intoxicating. "Now…" he began, but just as he started to form questions in his mind, the neck vanished from between his hands, as did the rest of the man. Hunter stared at his hands for a moment, bewildered, then spun as he heard an amused chuckle issue from behind him.

"I'm not that easy to pin down." There was obvious pleasure in the man's voice, he clearly relished the surprise painted all over Hunter's face.

The surprise turned quickly to anger and Hunter lunged forwards, no longer concerned with the meeting, just wanting to solve the mystery of the man's sudden disappearances once and for all. His hands again closed on thin air and the momentum of his lunge almost had him falling to the floor.

"Yon won't catch me." Again, the man had instantaneously appeared behind Hunter, arms folded and smirking.

"What are you? How are you doing that?" Hunters pride was screaming in pain as it came crashing down and Hunter had to admit temporary defeat, at least until he had this mystery all figured out.

"What a rude question." the man was not about to give in that easily, he was enjoying this far too much, "I'm a half-demon. Evanidus to be precise, that's teleporting to the uneducated."

"A half-demon?" Hunter asked, now confused, he'd never even heard of such a thing.

"Yes, half-demon, fathers a demon, mothers human." his tone was now patronizing, as though he was addressing a very small child, "Honestly, a vampire that hasn't heard of half-demons, wouldn't believe it if it wasn't standing right in front of me."

Hunter glared, he was not amused by this situation, he'd always thought of demons as myths, and he'd never heard the term half-demon before not even in myths. It had been a long time since there had been something Hunter didn't know, human related things being the exception, and he was shaken by it. "So where is this meeting?" He demanded, not being able to think of a suitable response to the messenger's statement.

Yawning, the man stepped into the centre of the small clearing just a few feet away, beckoning Hunter to follow him. Despite being reluctant to step into the unknown again, Hunter followed; right now he really just wanted this whole bizarre experience to be over. For a few moments they stood in silence, then out of nowhere brown rings flew up out of the floor surrounding them, stacking one above the other till he could only see the forest through the narrow gaps between them, almost in the same moment it vanished, replaced by a dazzling bluish white light, which vanished just seconds later and he was standing in a small round chamber, clearly underground as it had rough stone walls.

"Follow me." the messenger barely gave Hunter time to get his bearings before striding out of the chamber through a narrow doorway which lead onto a broad, dark, cold passage way. It sloped down, Hunter noted, meaning they were going even further underground with every step, not good for a quick escape, especially as he didn't have a clue how to activate the strange rings to take him back to the surface. He was getting a bad feeling about this.

The passage went on for quite a long way, but as they walked it became lighter, though Hunter couldn't identify the light source and after around three minutes they entered a much larger stone chamber. Large wasn't quite the right word, it wasn't particularly wide, or very long, but the walls stretched up and up above his head vanishing into a glowing shimmering sheet of…. something…which seemed to be the source of the light. In the chamber, there was a large oval table, surrounded by many chairs, all of which were occupied, bar two, the one nearest the passage and the one at the head of the table on the opposite side to where Hunter stood.

The person who would clearly be sitting there was standing next to the chair, he was very young, not more than 17 or 18 years old, tall, well muscled with glossy black hair almost down to his shoulders and a fringe that fell into his eyes. He was simply dressed, dark trousers and t-shirt, but his lower right arm and hand were encased in a strange, intricate gold device.

"Thank you Xavier. They're all here now." He spoke in a voice that was not human. It was forced, echoed and rhasped, it didn't appear to be produced by the body it was coming from. It didn't fit, it wasn't natural, and it made Hunter shiver. "Mr Redfern, take a seat and we can introduce everyone."

All eyes were fixed on Hunter, he didn't object and took his time to sit down as the messenger called Xavier left the room, he wanted to make it clear to everyone that he was not going to be controlled by anyone here. He was here because he wanted to be and he could leave whenever he wanted, he was above these people.

The boy with the strange voice didn't sit down; he looked around the room, a cruel smile making his pleasure clear, "Welcome. You've all been brought here because you all have one thing in common; you are the most evil, despicable individuals this world has to offer." Slowly he stepped away from his chair, making as if to walk around the table, but stopping behind the first chair in which sat a man in his 30's, dressed as a priest with neat brown hair and a chillingly calm smile on his face, "The first evil, the thing which first took the name evil for itself, for millennia its wrecked havoc through countless dimensions. In this incarnation, we may call it Caleb."

Caleb nodded in acknowledgment as the boy continued his walk, pausing behind the second chair, this one was a younger man, mid-twenties at the oldest, his dark blonde hair combed mostly back from his face and his ice blue eyes roaming the room "Treize Kushrenada, our most recent earth wide leader, who seized control with almost no right, causing the deaths of thousands."

Treize laughed slightly at the description, the boy moved on, the next man was far more striking than the two before him and with a far more inhuman air. If he'd been standing up he would have been unnaturally tall, with silver hair, so long it rested on his knees, his eyes were a swirling mix of colours, never settling on a single one, he gave off a definite air of insanity. "The inorganic Angel Rosiel, most powerful of all angels, his actions almost led to the destruction of the earth."

Rosiel's smile was pure evil, "Lets hope this time my actions will help us succeed." Hunters mind was reeling slightly, Angel? Angel's didn't exist and weren't they supposed to be all goodness and light? But the boy was moving on, ignoring the slight mutterings around him to make his next introduction, this man a complete opposite to the striking one next to him. Short blonde hair, brown eyes wearing a suit that made him look like a completely ordinary businessman, "Guy Boyd, CEO of the Boyd Sorcerer Cabal and here representing the united Cabals. The Cabals have been involved in underhand and illegal business since such things existed."

"A pleasure." Guy said coolly, clearly not at all intimidated by being told that he was sitting next to an angel. Now the boy had reached the chair just one away from Hunter, the occupant of this seat also appeared to be no more than 18 years old with light brown hair and eyes, he looked completely unthreatening, Hunter was more than a little curious to hear what qualified him to be there, "Light Yagami. Kira. The infamous Japanese mass murderer from many years ago, striving to create a new world, defeated by death but only for a short time."

Then it was Hunters turn, he tensed, not at all sure what was going to be said about him and that was not a desirable situation, "Hunter Redfern," the strange voice so close behind him was a little unsettling, "Head of the Redfern family of vampires, controller of the Night World council through which he attempted to remove humans from this earth by bringing about an apocalypse."

Hunter was pleased with that description; it was respectful enough and gave a good enough impression of his aims and achievements. He felt that now he could sit back, relax and listen to the rest of the introductions, no longer needing to worry about "fitting in."

On his right, where the boy now stood, there sat by far the physically oldest person present at the meeting, well into his thirties with blonde hair and glistening silver eyes, he had quite a regal air, "Dr Kazutaka Muraki, a skilled sorcerer and brutal murderer, the after life would be far emptier if it wasn't for his efforts."

"You're too kind." Dr Muraki's voice proved suitably chilling; anyone who heard that voice whispering in their ear would know their time was up.

Next came a heavily built man, long dark hair and eyes that were a pure black were a startling contrast to his painfully white skin, Hunter half suspected that this was another vampire, "Dracula. I don't think more introduction is necessary."

Dracula? Yet another myth sprung up from the floor, it appeared Hunter was going to have to seriously re-evaluate his knowledge of the world. He'd always thought Dracula was the product of human hysteria, refusing to believe there was a race of blood drinkers they attributed all the crimes to one imaginary figure. Obviously, he'd been wrong.

The next to be introduced didn't break from the trend for startling appearance that was appearing around the table. Very short white blonde hair and piercing blue eyes formed an almost clichéd bad boy appearance, but he radiated real power so Hunter was willing to forgive it, "Klaus. One of the original vampires, his constant energy has significantly boosted the population of vampires all over the world and the brutality of his vendettas is famous."

This was just getting ridiculous, Hunter thought tiredly, there were no original vampires, there was only his family line, and that definitely didn't contain anyone called Klaus. Of course he could be one of the first made vampires but then he would have been familiar to Hunter and part of the night world and he'd never even heard the phrase the originals before. Hunter did not like feeling ignorant and that was exactly what he was feeling at the moment. He wanted to believe that these people were lying and weren't who they said they were, but if that was the case they would have run screaming at the strangeness of it all.

The strange boy had little regard for Hunter's musings and moved on at exactly the same speed. The next to be introduced was another youngish man with soft blonde hair, green eyes and a pleasant smile that was definitely out of place in the present company. "Tohma Seguchi, for his whole life he has been using his power and influence to get him exactly what he wants, whenever he wants and by any means necessary, that is what he'll help us to do."

When Hunter's eyes slid onto the final person to be introduced, he felt a fear so profound, so total that he almost thought he would never again feel confidence. It confused him, because it was definitely the least threatening figure in the room, again, no more than 17 years old, not particularly tall or well built but perfectly proportioned with the most handsome face Hunter had ever seen, dark brown hair fell messily over his forehead, slightly obscuring eyes such a pale blue they were almost white, Hunter was transfixed, both by the boys beauty and the waves of power and darkness that he was suddenly throwing out, "Nidhogg, Dread Biter, Tearer of Corpses, Malice striker, the dragon who feeds on the tree of life. Nidhogg has gone beyond the need for definition. It is beyond gender, it is neither feminine, nor masculine. Instead, its nature is so incomprehensible, so chaotic, that it is simply beyond any such definition. He is the thing that created evil."

Hunter was certain that almost every person in the room squirmed in their seat, suddenly feeling unworthy of being there despite their impressive credentials and suffering under the bombardment of Nidhogg's total power. As quickly as it came, it went and there was an audible sigh of relief around the room, Nidhogg sniggered, but so quietly Hunter thought he might have imagined it.

"And I," the boy who'd summoned them all said, with an amused smile as he took his seat at the head of the table, "Am Ash. I am a Goa'uld; I am from the race that once enslaved this planet, many hundreds of years ago we once again did battle with warriors from here. At that time I was in service with one of the greatest Goa'uld System Lords, Lord Set. He was defeated by your warriors and has become trapped in the afterlife. I have called you here so that we may raise him and then bask in the glory of his revenge as we take this world for our own and make its people suffer!"

Well, that really wasn't what Hunter had expected him to say.

* * *

Giles was in heaven, metaphorically speaking of course, sitting in his house with a cup of tea, listening to some good classic rock and reading his new book, what could be more perfect? The book was what he'd expected and more, meticulously compiled, and in order of when they were supposed to come true with a small note on the original context, just marvellous.

He'd had almost an hour's good fun already, working out which of the prophecies had already come true, as they weren't generally terribly serious prophecies this hadn't been at all depressing, and was now turning to the pages for this year to see what had been predicted for this year. His smile faded around halfway down the page when he saw a prophecy that departed from the lighthearted theme of the book.

_When the sun sets on the reign of mankind,_

_Brought by the legions of darkness led by the serpent which is not of this earth,_

_When those who drink of the fluid of life become strange and unfamiliar, _

_So comes the fight that signals the endless night,_

_The ranks of the dead shall rise led by the dragon that feeds on the tree of life,_

_All is lost unless those who are most loved by God join with those who loved God the most._

Yes, that was definitely not pleasant and if this one was going to come true then they were most certainly in trouble. He sighed, his fun really didn't last very long these days, and wearily he read the context of the prophecy and groaned. It appeared that the philosopher who'd made this particular prophecy had a near perfect record when it came to his ancient predictions, though he rarely made any about the very distant future, this was one of the few and so far the others (which had predicted all three world wars) had come true. Drat. Bollocks. Bugger. Giles allowed himself a few choice words of frustration as he picked up the phone and called the gang to meet him at the Magic Box as soon as possible.

* * *

"Ranks of the dead? Dragons? Legions of Darkness? Endless night? This does not sound good!" Xander exclaimed loudly in a tone that was almost flippant, but tinged with real concern, "And its solutions not really helpful either. Most loved by God, loved God the most, what the hell's that all about?"

They were grouped around the table in the Magic Box, closed on Sundays since Anya had departed for greener pastures and wasn't forcing Giles to open up at every available opportunity. Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn having just listened to Giles explanation as to why they'd been dragged away from their leisurely Sunday afternoon.

"That, as they say, is the question." Giles replied gravely, "I'm relatively sure that 'those who drink of the fluid of life' refers to vampires, but I'm not sure how they could become strange. The tree of life comes from Norse mythology, which I'm extremely rusty on. Legions of darkness could refer to a number of things."

"Aren't we getting a bit carried away?" Buffy asked, with a half laugh, "I mean this is a prophecy right? They're not big on accuracy are they? This might never happen, how do we know it's meant to happen now anyway?"

"We know it's meant to happen now because that's what the prophet said and frankly his other prophecies have been far too good for us to ignore it, that would not be wise."

"Giles there haven't been any signs! If the world was about to be attacked we'd know something about it, the vampires and demons would be full of it!"

"She has a point Giles," Willow put in, "If its this big there'd be something and there hasn't been anything."

"Precisely. The calm before the storm, we have to at least look into it."

Buffy sighed theatrically, "Fine. I'll go out tonight, see what the word in the bars is, ask Spike."

Giles groaned at the thought of bringing Spike back into their circle, after the encounter with Glory just months previously he'd been relatively distant from the gang for which he'd been hugely grateful. He wasn't going to be petty and bitter, he could acknowledge that Spike was useful in a fight, sometimes he was even an asset to their team on rare occasions, but it just wasn't right to be a team fighting evil and have a murderous vampire tagging along with them, it didn't fit. It wasn't healthy either, to have him so involved with Buffy, he was attracted to her, that much was clear and what with her ideals preventing her killing him now that he had a soul he wasn't at all keen on the two of them being alone together. However, he was fully aware that she wasn't going to listen to him on the subject, so the only way of making sure things didn't go badly was to allow him back into the gang.

"Be careful with Spike."

"Giles I can take him, I'm the slayer remember," and Buffy was gone to get prepared for her patrol and to try and figure out where Spike might be hiding.

"For once Giles, I agree with you. You should not hang around with evil things that want to suck your blood." Xander's indignation on this point was by now so familiar it barely registered with anyone.

"Bye guys!" and Buffy was as always very skilled at completely ignoring everyone's advice.

* * *

Hunter was confused, annoyed and having a sudden moment of feeling deeply inferior, something which had not happened for a long time and this was causing him to stay resolutely quiet as the others argued around him.

He got the feeling that no one present actually objected to the plan, they were just annoyed that they weren't in charge and he strongly suspected that several were having the same inferior feelings as he was. The most vocal, surprisingly, was the strange man who'd been introduced as an ex-world leader. His main argument appeared to be that taking over the world was a waste of time and a gross over reaction to what had actually happened. Echoing his concerns were both the Cabal leader and the out of place smiley blonde man, both of whom seemed uncertain of how exactly they would benefit from this. The other objections mostly revolved around the fact that they didn't need to rule the world, just destroy it, this came mainly from the people who didn't depend on the earths existence for survival.

Ash did not appear at all concerned by the arguing and sat in his chair, leaning back leisurely and watching them in an indulgent manner. Slightly more disconcerting was the dragon, who was chuckling to himself, trading glances with Ash every now and again which caused even more laughter from both of them. Hunter was suddenly painfully aware of how his victims felt when they heard him laugh.

Lazily, the dragon rose to his feet, silence fell instantly, all eyes turned to him, "Gentleman," his voice was unusually deep for such a pretty young boy, a reminder that this was most definitely not its natural form, "You can argue about this, forever, it won't bring you anything. You all know that you'll end up agreeing to help Ash, so let's just hurry things along and agree so we can get started. I woke up from a very nice nap to be here so please, let's just get on with it."

Well, when someone whose names include Tearer of Corpses and Dread Biter tells you to do something, you do it. No one spoke, the dragon sat back down again, Ash stood.

"So, anyone who wishes to leave may go now. For the rest of us…we need to get some sacrifices to raise Lord Set."

* * *

Characters that are introduced and where they come from!

Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Spike, Dawn and Caleb-all from Buffy(obviously)

Ash-Stargate

Treize Kushrenada-Gundam Wing

Dracula-this will be the kind of Dracula that appears in Blade, rather than the preety lame Dracula that turned up in Buffy

Rosiel-Angel Sanctuary

Light Yagami-Death note

Guy Boyd and the Cabals- Kelley Armstrong

Dr Kazutaka Muraki-Descendents of Darkness

Klaus-Vampire Diaries

Tohma Seguchi-Gravitation

Nidhogg-Ok, technically he's a norse dragon but he's going to be one of the dragons from the Night World books.

As always, review and tell me what you think!


	3. And so we begin

**Authors Notes: **Riley buggered off with the rest of the initiative at the end of series five. Initiative wears "old" uniforms which are just ordinary 21st century (the year 2000 ) military uniforms, which if you missed it, is because we are in the Gundam Wing Universe and the initiative are old timey peoples. K?

I know there isn't much "development" with Stefan...but oh god the brooding would have killed me.

Thanks again to proof read girl!

* * *

Chapter 2

Research is the bane of every organisations existence, no one likes doing research, its tedious and time consuming and often fruitless and pointless. Generally speaking the only thing research leads to is an admittance that it would just be easier to go and ask the people who were experts on it. When this is done entire departments of people groan and beat their heads against walls. In fact, a link has been established between work place suicides and research projects; therefore, it can be universally acknowledged that research is a bad thing.

Giles had not yet realised this. Giles thought that there wasn't a problem on this earth that couldn't be solved by extensive research, with the use of books, computers were strictly forbidden. There is nothing online that we can't find in a book, he would tell them repeatedly as they longed for the quickness and ease that a search engine provided. Right now, he was saying it at least every three minutes.

Xander was staring into the middle-distance hands resting on a book that was almost as big as a small dog, Dawn was doodling on a sheet of paper and Willow and Buffy were playing hangman, no one was getting anywhere.

"Did you know that everything useful the Babylonians ever wrote down was destroyed in the fall of Babylon? That is why this is utterly pointless!" and Xander's head smashed down into the centre of his book.

"Well with that attitude of course it is. We've established a lot of things over the past few hours, it's got nothing to do with any of the demonic serpents, and it's not something being planned by the vampires. This is valuable information." Giles returned with an enthusiasm which came only from being able to poke around in old musty books for hours on end.

Several hours passed.

Giles slumped into a seat and closed his eyes in defeat, "It's hopeless."

"Hah! Hah! Giles agrees with me! Hah! Hah!" Xander's jubilant dance jolted everyone out of their comatose states 'causing several books, pencils and sheets of paper to fall to the floor.

"What?" Buffy asked drowsily, "Did we find something?"

"No. We didn't. It's hopeless, Giles admits it. Now do we get to admit that nothings happening?"

"Of course not," Giles was now annoyed, "We must simply change tactics and look elsewhere for the information."

"Look where Giles? We've read the whole library." Willow might have had a love of books, but even she was tiring of them.

"The Watchers Council?" Dawn suggested tentatively.

"Be serious Dawn, they wouldn't help us if the world depended on it…which it does. Hmmm…" Buffy trailed off realising just how stupid that statement was, but another idea formed in her mind as quickly as that one died, "What about the initiative? They're still up and running."

"No. There's no way we're bringing those honourless cretins back into affairs! I won't have it." Giles had strong feelings on many things and the initiative were one of those things, he had a distinct objection to any organization that tried to get Buffy killed but his objections to the initiative went deeper than that.

The Initiative was an organisation that went against much of what Giles believed in. They experimented on the creatures they captured instead of just eliminating them quickly; they caused them levels of suffering that were just unacceptable. Also, they were military and Giles objected to the military, he felt that it was the first step to a totalitarian police state and that was never ideal. Another objection he had to co-operating with them was that they lied; they mislead people and betrayed them. Their actions were entirely focused on their goals and they were willing to do anything to achieve those goals.

"If this situation is as dangerous as you say it is, which by the way I still don't agree with, then we should do everything we possibly can to get the information we need, right?" Very occasionally Xander did say sensible things, it was so occasisional that people rarely realised the statements were coming from him. Today Giles assumed it had come from Willow and so directed his answer at her.

"I simply feel that it would be counter productive to involve them."

The door burst open and in waltzed another of Giles pet hates, Spike, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself. "I know something you don't know." He said smugly, arms crossed.

"Oh good lord." Giles visibly deflated, put a hand to his head and massaged his forehead viciously to ward off the headache he just knew was coming, "What exactly do you know Spike?"

"Not telling." Spike replied cheerily, settling on the shop counter, leaning forward with a knowing smile on his face.

Giles groaned, "Why didn't we kill you?"

"Hey, no need to take that attitude; I won't help unless you're nice to me." There is nothing like some true, pure British indignation in a crisis, it just helps things along nicely.

"Giles." said Buffy with a tired resignation in her voice, "Please Spike. What do you know?"

Spike considered for a moment, enjoying their suspense, before smiling, "Alright then, that little rhyme thing you're getting all worked up about, says something about weird vampires right? "

"Yes…and?" Giles couldn't help butting in, he just couldn't.

"Well from the sounds of things there's at least one really strange vampire in town." Spike finished smugly.

There was a brief silence, "What exactly is so strange about this vampires?" Xander prompted, he was used to being the one to ask for clarification, he was always the one who didn't understand.

"He was seen feeding, in broad daylight."

It took a moment for that to sink in, "You mean it's a vampire, that's immune to sunlight?" Willow shivered at the thought.

Xander was far more vocal, "That's bad right? That's really bad. I mean, if vampires can go out in the light then there's nowhere to hide!"

Everyone in the room turned to look at him with raised eyebrows at the unnecessary dramatics.

"Well that settles it," Buffy continued, "We need the initiatives help."

"No!" Was Giles instant protest, "We are not getting them involved."

Dawn sighed and resumed her doodling; she knew that it was going to be a long time before they stopped arguing about it, she also knew that they would eventually try and contact the initiative. It was inevitable; they just had to argue about it first, sometimes, Dawn hated how illogical people were.

* * *

Elena Gilbert was happy, that was quite unusual for Elena as the past year had been spent finding out that vampires were real, that she was in love with one, that death was not the end nor permanent nor peaceful and that being in love with a vampire often lead to death, destruction and many unpleasant experiences. Yes, in the past couple of years Elena had been dead and come back to life while being in a relationship with a member of the undead, the complications involved in all of that generally lead to unhappiness.

At the moment however, things were good. She was most definitely alive and she was most definitely with Stefan, who despite being dead was also very much alive. Aside from being alive, her life was also not in danger, which was again rather unusual having lived under threat for quite a long time. Also, having graduated from high school she now had a job at the local nursery where she was training to become a fully qualified nursery nurse, which she loved, she loved small children and babies, they were all so cute.

She was at the nursery as she mused about her unusual state of happiness, preparing lunch. Those around her were also happy, that was good as well, Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, they were all enjoying a life free of danger and suffering and that was the way it should be.

There was only one person that sometimes crossed her mind that brought a vague sense of unease that tainted her happiness a little. Damon. He was Stefan's brother but as different from him as it was possible to be. He'd left with the danger and none of them had seen or hear anything of him since. She wasn't worried for his safety; he was more than capable of looking after himself, but she was worried that the past years events had left him depressed and questioning his lifestyle. That kind of self doubt was never good, even if you're a member of the undead.

If Elena had her way, Damon would still be around and they would all be living together as one big happy family. She was a big believer in family, her own being in a way far from ideal, she felt that regardless of what a person had done, if they were family they were family and you should treat them as such and include them in any way possible. Stefan didn't agree, though he would have liked a better relationship with his brother, he was well aware that there were things in their pasts that would always stand in the way of that. After all, they had killed each other, murder often stood in the way of rosy ideal relationships.

She sighed and shook herself, she wasn't going to ruin her good mood by wallowing in the past difficulties, she was going to finish serving lunch and when her shift finished she was going to meet Stefan and they were going to have a fun afternoon. This was the mantra which she repeated to herself and she finished up her work and danced out of the door, unaware that she was being watched.

"That's her," Klaus confirmed, he was sitting in the coffee shop across the street with Hunter, Light and the strange half-demon messenger called Xavier.

Hunter had no idea how he'd made it into the first team that had been dispatched to fetch a sacrifice, he would have much preferred to sit back a little and see how it was going to be done and what was to be expected. They'd all spent the night in the strange underground hideout after agreeing to be part of the plan, in the morning, Ash started the day with a strange, business like meeting to outline that days aim.

The aim had turned out to be the kidnapping of a young woman called Elena Gilbert. She was linked to Klaus, he had tried to kill all her friends and destroy everything she loved, after she and her friends killed a girl called Katherine, but Hunter got the impression he had also just been a little bored. Needless to say he hadn't succeeded and was now very, very annoyed. Klaus inclusion in the team had therefore been obvious; Xavier seemed to function as Ash's eyes and ears and so was also a logical choice. Light had simply volunteered, clearly eager to get down to business and Hunter? Well Hunter had been nominated.

"Elena's boyfriend is a vampire. Who better to deal with a vampire than another vampire?" Nidhogg had said in a soft voice, looking straight at Hunter.

Hunter had resisted pointing out that Dracula was also a vampire, he was doubtful that he would ever be comfortable enough to behave normally around the dragon that created evil. So he was here, in a café in a small town, stalking a bouncy blonde haired girl who radiated happiness in a most sickening manner.

"So how are we going to do this?" Xavier asked in a bored voice, _'Why they sent three bloodthirsty murderers to orchestrate a kidnapping I don't know, this is going to be a disaster, you have no clue what you're doing.'_ Was what he was clearly communicated through his disdainful look.

"Follow her. Wait till she's alone. Grab her with the least possible fuss making sure no one notices she's gone for a long while." Hunter might not want to do this, but he was going to show that he was more than capable of doing more than just killing people. After all, did Xavier think they just grabbed a person in the middle of the street to feed? There was far more skill involved, stalking and kidnapping were both integral to a vampires survival.

"Good plan," Klaus agreed, enforcing Hunters impression that he was either used to having minions plan for him or that subtlety was not his speciality.

Hunter hated small towns. He really really hated small towns. In most places, four strangers wandering the street wouldn't even be noticed let alone seen as suspicious, here, everyone was looking at them. He had no objection to being looked at, but right now, it was not helpful. Slowly, calmly, they left the café and followed the girl down the street.

Elena had no idea she was being followed, her head was in the clouds and her head was filled with idle dreams of all things glorious. She tilted her head back slightly to let the sun hit all of her face and smiled happily. Stefan was waiting for her just outside her house. He was more and more handsome to her every time she saw him. He wasn't tall dark and handsome, though he was once, now he was small dark and handsome and that was just fine.

He smiled when he saw her, giving her his customary gentle hug, "You look happy. It suits you."

"That's because I am happy!" she laughed in return, taking his hand she pulled him along the street, "Lets have lunch outside today! The weathers so nice…"

Hunter was gagging, he could only just hear the annoying simpering, and soppy conversation coming from up ahead and it was making him feel sick. This…thing…that was with her was supposed to be a vampire, god damn it! How could it be this…soppy! That was just wrong. Light kept looking at him strangely; Hunter logically assumed that his hearing wasn't good enough to hear what was going on, lucky bastard.

On some levels, of course, the soppiness was a good thing; it would make it far easier and more pleasurable once the time came to kill her. Hunter was a vampire, he had always been a vampire, death was his life, but he did like to rationalise the deaths of those he killed. She annoyed me. She was too pretty. She had strange legs. These were all common excuses when it came to the deaths of women, with men it was more along the lines of, he looked at me wrong. Occasionally, when he was feeling lazy, the justification was nothing more than a casual, I felt like it, which danced through his head once he had committed the murder.

The girl and her vam-puppy (he refused to share his name with anything that soppy, hence he was renaming it) had settled in a secluded hollow created by bushes in a stretch of countryside that Hunter couldn't identify the use of. They were evidently going to have a picnic; they'd even brought a blanket for Christ's sakes. Something had to be done.

"I refuse to sit here," Hunter indicated their pathetic hiding place amongst some trees conveniently near by to the bushes, "And listen to that!" he pointed in the girl's general direction just as the air was filled with cheerful laughter that was almost painful to his ears.

Klaus raised his eyebrows, "What do you want to do instead?"

"There are four of us and two of them. We should just grab her and leave."

"They're more dangerous than they look!" Klaus warned, clearly more than a little uncomfortable with taking them on directly.

"Not to mention that we're supposed to take her without drawing immediate attention to it." Xavier put in.

"Does it really matter how many people notice?" Hunter was now frustrated, "That thing over there masquerading as a vampire hardly poses a threat to us!"

This was greeted by silence, Hunter preened internally thinking that he'd convinced them once and for all and that they would get out of this stupid place quickly after all.

Light smiled, eyes twinkling, "Nidhogg wouldn't like it."

Well, that decided it; Hunter thought to himself, they were going to be sitting around for a long time, you just CAN'T argue with Nidhogg.

* * *

Dawn had been right, but she refrained from pointing it out, no one would have listened anyway. After almost three hours of arguing it backwards and forwards, during which Giles had almost killed Spike several times it had been agreed that they had to try and get in touch with the initiative. It made sense! The initiative had far more resources than they did, once Giles books had been exhausted the initiative really was the only place left to turn.

The next problem of course, was finding the initiative. Unlike many secret organisations their head quarters was actually hidden and hidden well. Where as the Preventers had already seen the sense in having phone numbers for all its departments, secret or otherwise, the initiative had yet to make it on the list. This however, did not stop Xander from trying.

"No. I'm not crazy. They exist! Weird guys kidnapping vampires and demons and all that kind of thing, ringing any bells? Wear old style military uniform, come on! You have to have seen them in the building." He hung up and turned round, "They don't know what I'm talking about and if I call again they'll arrest me!" he beamed, "so what's plan B?"

They had retreated to the greater comfort of Buffy's house and were in the living room watching Xander's unsuccessful phone attempt.

"Maybe we should get arrested!" Willow suggested, "At least then we'll be one step closer!"

"Perhaps not," Giles replied slowly, "Though of course your call may have gained sufficient attention for them to find us that is always a possibility. After all they've never enjoyed being summoned, they prefer to summon."

"Ok. But what if they don't 'summon' us till it's too late? We have to do something!" typically Buffy was frustrated by a situation that didn't allow her to kick things, she did so hate this.

"Well what other choice do we have? We've put ourselves in their hand at your request, now we can just sit back and see where it leads us."

Spike was standing in the corner, he'd been less than pleased when the initiative had come into play, he did not easily forget people who implanted chips into his head, "Is it weird that I agree with Giles that calling up the initiative was bad?"

"Please Spike, don't support me, it robs me off my credibility."

Dawn rolled her eyes; she knew exactly how this situation would play out as well. They would spend hours and hours arguing about whether or not they should just wait and see what happened and by the time they'd made a decision, whatever they'd been waiting for would already have happened.

* * *

Hunter loved life with all his soul, but right now he'd been driven to the brink of suicide by over an hour listening to sap spew forth from the bushes. He was currently sitting on the floor with his hands over his ears taking a mental tour of all his memories of brutal murder in an effort to keep himself sane. Light and Xavier were highly amused, Klaus just appeared confused and preferred to keep his eyes firmly on the girl.

"She's leaving!" he hissed excitedly, "and he's staying!"

Absolutely brilliant, Hunter thought, finally he could punish this girl for the sap that she had put him through. He took the lead, beckoning Xavier to follow, it wasn't that he didn't trust Light or Klaus; he just had doubts about their abilities.

"You get in front of her," he told Xavier in a soft voice, "Grab her, I'll knock her out."

"How?" was the apprehensive whispered response.

Hunter bent down and grabbed a sturdy stick of the floor, he didn't speak, he felt that it was pretty self explanatory. Xavier's raised eyebrows confirmed his belief.

"What do we do?" Light demanded, just a little too loudly for Hunters liking considering that they were sneaking along behind the girl.

"Stay back, if we don't get her, chase her." He could feel Lights glare boring into his back, but wasn't too concerned; he was just a little kid after all.

They were moving too fast for true stealth but that didn't matter, the girl was walking fast and humming to herself, she clearly was not expecting anything bad to happen. She slowed slightly as they began to move uphill, not ideal, but at least it would give Xavier a chance.

"Now." He muttered just loud enough to be heard by the rest of the team; Xavier vanished and promptly reappeared in front of the girl. She screamed, but was cut off quickly enough by Xavier's large hand covering her mouth, she struggled, and Hunter didn't hesitate and thoroughly enjoyed hitting her round the head with the stick. She was knocked unconscious instantly; all that bothered Hunter about it was that he couldn't hit her harder.

Klaus was equally jubilant as Xavier lifted her over his shoulder and they prepared to return to the base with their prize.

Their journey was uneventful, apart from increasing grumblings of discontent from Light. Hunter was relatively sure that they would explode out of him at some point; hopefully it would be in English because Hunter enjoyed listening to other people's unhappiness, that and hearing him complain in Japanese was already giving him a headache.

He was right and shortly after the unconscious girl had been dumped in a corridor lined with cells and all the members of the pact were sitting in the main chamber having just finished their debrief, Lights grumblings became considerably louder, directed at anyone that would listen.

"Shinigami are liars." He began, catching most people's attention with that unusual statement, "You see, just before I died the shinigami Ryuk promised me that as a user of the Death Note I would go to neither heaven nor hell. That what was waiting for me was nothingness," he spread his arms out theatrically, "This does not look like nothingness to me!"

"You wanted do die?" Tohma enquired, presumably purely out of the sense of camaraderie that came from coming from the same country.

"No! But when I am promised something I expect it to happen."

Nidhogg cleared his throat a little awkwardly from his corner, "About that Light…I was meaning to say…"

Nidhogg? Awkward? This was interesting; Hunter listened a little more intently.

"What?"

"Well you see, the thing about nothingness is that nothingness belongs to me and it's very annoying when the Shinigami try to put things in my nothingness. They don't seem to realise that when they put things in my nothingness it's no longer nothingness and that's very annoying. So, when you fell into my nothingness I couldn't resist just, pushing you right back out of it." Nidhogg grinned, all awkwardness gone, "So technically I own you and I own your life!"

Hunter almost laughed at the look on Light's face, he couldn't really tell if he was more horrified by that fact that he was only there because he'd been illegally dumped in someone's nothingness or that his life was now possessed by that dragon.

"Erm…" was all Light could manage in response.

"Think positive," Ash chimed in idly, "Nidhogg takes good care of his toys."

* * *

The knock on the door was unexpected, people tended not to knock on Buffy's door, everyone who wanted to get in had a key or would just break in, often smashing the front window much to Xander's annoyance, he was the one who had to replace it. Despite the strangeness of it, Dawn went to open it without a second thought.

On the door step stood three men. They were all dressed in military uniform, the old fashioned sort that had been common throughout the 21st century. They weren't all wearing the same uniforms, Dawn assumed that had something to do with rank, she didn't need more than three guesses to work out who they were.

"Wow, you initiative guys work quick." She turned and called out into the house, "Buffy, the initiative are here." She called, before bouncing back upstairs.

Buffy was a little slow in turning up at the door, it had taken her a moment to work out exactly what it was that Dawn had shouted, so she was still a little surprised by what she saw.

"You called." The man at the front of the group said, his voice was gruff and he was clearly trying to show at least some displeasure at the fact that they'd been called.

"Yeah, we did. Come in, we have to talk."

Having sensed that something was going on, Willow, Xander, Giles and Spike had all massed in the living room to await the new developments. The new developments looked a little nervous as they entered and Buffy waved them to a seat on the sofa.

"I'm General Ferretti. I'm currently in charge of all things relating to the initiative project, these are my colleagues, Major West and Colonel Prendergast. We got the impression from your phone call that there was some threat that you needed our help with." The three men were very similar, all tall, well built with greying hair and the typical military appearance. Buffy thought that the similarities in appearance had something to do with what they were fed as young recruits.

"Yes," Giles was by far the best at communicating things in a clear and concise manner, "We discovered a prophecy, of Babylonian origin actually, it seems to prophesise the end of the world at some time soon. One of the signs we've already seen, vampires behaving strangely. We can't, however, find out any more about it. We can't decipher the prophecy fully and we don't know what we're supposed to do to stop this."

Ferretti nodded, "This prophecy, was it made by a philosopher called Kidinnu?"

Giles frowned, "Yes actually."

"_When the sun sets on the reign of mankind,_

_Brought by the legions of darkness led by the serpent which is not of this earth,_

_When those who drink of the fluid of life become strange and unfamiliar, _

_So comes the fight that signals the endless night,_

_The ranks of the dead shall rise led by the dragon that feeds on the tree of life,_

_All is lost unless those who are most loved by God join with those who loved God the most._

Is that the one?" West asked slowly.

"Yes. You know what it means don't you. Tell us." Buffy was not about to let there be any doubt about why they invited the initiative in.

"Yes, we know what it means. Hundreds of years ago, we weren't called the initiative and we weren't interested in vampires and demons and things like that. We were called Stargate Command and we were concerned with things that weren't from this planet, we were protecting the earth from things that came from other worlds." Buffy moved to interrupt but Giles glared and Ferretti was allowed to continue uninterrupted. "We eliminated the threat a long time ago and we became the initiative, but not before we were made aware of the prophecy's that had been made about the possible consequences of our actions.

The serpent which is not of this earth refers to something called the Goa'uld. They are an alien race; they are the source of almost all our mythology. They were here, enslaving humans; they made us believe they were Gods. Some of the more famous ones that you might recognise include, Apophis, Ra, Anubis…"

"The Egyptian Gods were aliens?" Giles breathed, not interested in the implications of that, just fascinated by the very idea.

"Yes. We got rid of them, then hundreds of years later, beginning in the late 20th century we drew their attention again and we had to fight to save the planet. This serpent is obviously one of the many system lord Goa'uld that we angered over the years."

"What will they do?" Buffy was not as entranced as Giles.

"They will enslave the entire world, and then they will kill everyone who has angered them.

"How do we stop them?" Buffy let her anger show, she was not about to let anyone take over her world, not when she was alive.

"The last line, 'all is lost unless those who are most loved by God join with those who loved God the most' the only thing we can find that it might refer to, are angels."

"Angels are a myth." Giles wasn't entirely asleep; he knew full well that out of all mythical creatures the angels were most definitely a real myth. There was no such thing as angels.

"Maybe, but that's definitely what it's referring to," he put his had out to West, who handed him a very old looking book, "And this book tells you how to summon them."

Giles took it, "And if this doesn't work? If the angels are a myth?"

"There's another way, all those years ago, there wasn't a huge amount of people defeating the Goa'uld, there was just one team. This team, SG-1, are the best hope of defeating them, because they have done it before."

"Well we can't get them, they're in the past." Willow said, eyes almost crossing in confusion.

"According to that book," Ferretti pointed at the one Giles was holding, "That's where the angels come in."

* * *

Stefan didn't know what had happened, or when, but Elena was gone. She'd left him to go back to work after their picnic, but had never arrived. No one had seen her since. He had no idea what could have happened, it was a 10 minute walk at most between the field and the town, and he had scoured every inch of that way and had found no trace of her.

All that he had found was a small patch of disturbed earth that seemed to indicate a small struggle, too small. He was almost certain that Elena would have put up much more of a fight than that. He would have expected to see a vast area of disturbed land, with broken twigs and at least some residue from her or her attacker, blood or a piece of clothing. Something.

He was relatively sure that something had happened to her, she wouldn't just vanish like this, she would have said something to him. He was also relatively sure that she had been taken rather than hurt, he couldn't smell any blood, she definitely hadn't been killed anywhere around there.

So the logical conclusion was that she'd been kidnapped. The question now was why? And by who? All their enemies were gone, they'd been so happy, why now? Stefan blamed himself. He should never have let his guard down; he should have stayed with her, what was the point of being a strong, immortal vampire when he couldn't even protect the woman he loved?

He slumped against the tree next to where he had identified the small disturbance and stared miserably into the distance. He was useless, he had failed her, there was no question of that. Damon would never have let that happen…

Damon? He sat up sharply at the thought. Damon, he'd had an unquestionable attraction to Elena and he was always open to doing anything that would upset his little brother. Damon. Stefan's heart filled with anger, Damon had something to do with this.

* * *

The initiative soldiers had left; they weren't about to offer any more help than some information. They didn't want to get involved. That suited the gang fine, they didn't want the initiative involved, and they could handle this fine on their own.

"Sounds pretty simple," Xander closed the book with a snap having been the last to be allowed to take a look, "Summon the angel and it'll get you what you need."

"The only problem with that is that angels don't exist." Giles persisted, "That book is far from proving their existence and I think it's a little irresponsible to go around summoning something that might not exist! God only knows what we might summon with that ritual."

Dawn switched off yet again, she knew exactly what was coming next, research.

* * *

New guys!

Stefan, Damon and Elena-Vampire Diaries

Weird military general people are all charcters from Stargate.

Thankyou! Review?


	4. Decisions

Chapter 3

**Authors Note: **I don't know what happens in Strange Fate (L.J Smith) it hasn't been published yet, so I'm not sure if Illiana can use her powers or not. I'm using my artistic lisence and saying that she can't.

Please note: I despise Illiana that is why I only hang around with her for a few minutes.

* * *

Chapter 3

Giles was never happier than when he was among books, researching and sharing what he found with the rest of the gang, this is something we have already established. Therefore, it is not a massive jump to assume that he forced extra research on people purely because he enjoyed it and would in fact, without his love of research, been far more prepared to jump in feet first and would even have bordered on impulsive. This was something Willow had suspected for some time but she had yet to find true physical evidence of it, but she was watching and waiting and was relatively sure that in the course of this particular world saving attempt she would find it.

She had the time to wander and watch and wait, mainly because their research wasn't getting them anywhere. As Giles had said, angels appeared to be a myth, they didn't exist, and that was what all the books said. Almost every single person ever to research and explore the existence of angels had come to the same conclusion, they weren't real, and those that hadn't come to this conclusion weren't exactly sane. Every person who had tried to contact them, summon them or create them had drawn a blank and walked into a metaphorical brick wall. The logical conclusion of course was that they did not exist.

Except for the one book that the initiative had presented them with, which didn't really try to argue it's case at all, it just took the existence of angels as fact and went on from there. Giles wanted to dismiss it as the writings of an over zealous religious crackpot, but it clearly wasn't. The rest of the book dealt with extreme mythical creatures that were definitely real. Giles found it hard to believe that someone who got all his facts so right in all his other research could make such a massive mistake as championing the existence of something that was clearly a lie.

Giles didn't want to blindly believe one source without having any back up evidence, that was irresponsible and totally out of his character and he was frustrated by it because the source he did have was just so good. He pulled his glasses off and rubbed his forehead, a gesture to the headache he just knew he was going to develop.

"Come on Giles, lets just go for it, we can try the ritual, if nothing happens nothing happens, if an angel comes an angel comes and if something else comes we will deal with it. We always do." Buffy was by now so frustrated by the lack of action that she was on the brink of starting a fight with a group of evil people just so she could hit something.

"No! This is powerful magic, dark magic; we might not be able to handle what comes through. We might not even be able to complete the ritual, this will take an enormous amount of Willow, and it could kill her."

"Giles, I don't want you not to do this just because you think I can't handle it. If we have to do it I will. Saving the world is more important than my safety." Willow did not like being seen as the weak one, she was as strong as the others and she wanted people to give her the chance to prove it.

Giles didn't answer, just sighed, and then turned to look at Spike who had been sitting quietly in a corner occupying himself since the initiative had left, "Spike, have you ever heard anything about the existence of angels?"

Spike pulled a face, "Not really. Ain't ever heard someone say they don't exist, if they do, wouldn't hang around with a low life like me would they? Only way you'll ever find out is if you try the spell. Let Red try, she might surprise you."

"Thank you Spike," Giles sounded annoyed, he always sounded annoyed when Spike made a good point. He would then wait quite a long time before acknowledging that Spike had in fact been right.

* * *

The war was over. Every time he remembered that fact it made Quatre smile, both with surprise and sheer joy. When your life has been shaped by war, it's easy to forget that it's over when it's over; it's equally easy to collapse and loose the purpose in your life. Quatre did the first frequently, but the second he had escaped, mainly thanks to the great friends he had found in the war.

There had been a place for him when the war ended, his fathers business still needed running and he was more than happy to turn his hand to that. On the social level, the one most soldiers struggled with, he'd also had a place. He had friends, Heero, Duo and Wufei; they were united through their experiences, joined forever because of the lives they'd led for the years of the war.

Aside from them and far more important to him was Trowa. There are many situations in which you can meet the person who you love and will love forever, some are expected and some are unexpected. Meeting him in the middle of a war zone was definitely unexpected. The fact that the person he loved was a 'him' was definitely unexpected but not a bad thing. Quatre had adjusted to that idea very quickly; he would have adjusted absolutely anything for Trowa.

Right now he was taking a break from the businesses and had retreated to one of his houses in America. It wasn't the largest he owned, it wasn't the most luxurious, but it was significantly better than the houses lived in by the general population of the world. A substantial six bedroom manor house set in immeasurable amounts of land equipped with a swimming pool, tennis courts and a go kart course, Duo had insisted.

He was engaged in his favourite activity, gardening. He found that no matter how many gardeners he employed, the garden was still never in the state he wanted it to be unless he did it himself. It was a little frustrating, but in a way it was good because it gave him something to occupy himself with whenever he was newly arrived at one of his homes.

As Quatre knelt in front of a flower bed happily pulling weeds, Hunter was positioned in a tree just outside the walls of the grounds arguing with Rosiel.

"You're an angel," Hunter said through gritted teeth, "You can just fly down there and get him!"

"You really have no idea of subtlety do you?" was the scathing response.

"We don't need to be subtle! We just need to grab him and leave!" Hunter was definetly going to kill Nidhogg when he got back, kill him slowly and painfully. He'd almost jumped out of his chair and attempted to throttle him when he'd calmly volunteered Hunter to lead the next kidnap mission.

"As you did such a good job last time," he'd said, smiling sweetly at Hunter. If Nidhogg couldn't lay claim to being the most evil thing existing in the entire universe, he would be so very very dead right now.

Rosiel was glaring at him, clearly not used to taking orders, especially not from what he called "an overgrown leech." Hunter was about to start beating his head against the branch of the tree when a voice floated up from the floor, reminding Hunter that not only did he have the chronically uncooperative Rosiel to cope with, he had Muraki. Muraki, a decidedly strange doctor who appeared to have at least some control over death. He had declined the invitation to climb the tree and did not appear at all interested in their mission.

"I might not have your powers," he began, his mocking smile making him look even more psychotic than normal, "So I don't pretend to have the qualifications to lead this expedition, but I do know that the longer we sit here and discuss it the smaller our chances of success become."

"Yes thank you…"

"I'm not flying down there." Rosiel helpfully reminded him.

Hunter snarled as he turned on him angrily, "Why do you exist? Why are you alive? What is your purpose?" he spat, frustration with absolutely everything making him brave enough to verbally attack one of Gods first creations.

"Well," sadistic smile spread over his face, "I was dead, and why I'm alive now is a long story. You should ask Nidhogg about it."

Nidhogg, bloody brilliant, what had he done to attract the dragons cruel attentions? Also, curse him for forcing Hunter's mind to resort to his deeply buried British roots to express his frustration, that absolute tosser.

"Rosiel, I should tell you now that I'm not the most rational person when I'm angry. You may appear more powerful than me on paper, but I swear on my next meal and all those to come that that will not stop me ripping your head off if you don't spread out those little wings of yours, flap all the way down there and grab that boy right now!"

After a moments pause, Rosiel burst out laughing making Hunter shiver with fear as he had not shivered since he was a very small child. "No." was the simple answer.

As Hunter searched his mind desperately for something he could say to persuade the stubborn angel when Murkai interjected another word, "I'm sure, that if we capture him intact, Ash wouldn't object to our…playing with him on our return."

A dreamy smile replaced the eerie chuckles of laughter, "Play with him," came the soft echo and in moments he'd left the tree, wings stretched to their fullest extent.

"Thank you!" Hunter jumped from his branch to land in front of Muraki, "I didn't think we'd ever get him to go!"

"Simply psychiatry," he replied dreamily, "It seems it's true that humans were made in the likeness of angels."

Rosiel didn't take long, just 5 minutes later he landed in front of them, struggling human held tight to his chest, free hand covering his mouth to obscure any screams. The boy was smaller than he looked from a distance, delicate in a sickeningly adorable way, but Hunter felt no particular loathing for this victim and therefore allowed Murkai to inject something into his neck making him go limp.

Hunter had not forgotten what Rosiel had said about his existence, on his return to the base Hunter did ask Nidhogg why Rosiel existed. Nidhogg had jabbed a finger into his chest, "Nothingness, remember what I said about my nothingness!" was all that he was prepared to say.

* * *

Xander was contemplating starting a betting pool on when Giles would give up and just accept that an attempt at summoning an angel was the only way to proceed. It was pretty clear to everyone that they weren't going to find any information that could prove or disprove the existence of angels to Giles satisfaction.

Spike had made it his personal mission to convince Giles of this, mainly; it appeared, because currently that was the best way to annoy him.

"You're just pissed off 'cause you didn't find the answer and because you don't own the oldest mustiest book on earth!" he said, leaning against the door frame of the dining room, watching Giles sifting through pages of notes.

"That is not how I feel."

"It is. No ones looking to good old Giles to save the day now, they've found someone else who knows a heck of a lot more than you do and you can't stand it!"

"That is not true."

"Which bit? That someone knows more than you or that you hate it?"

"Both."

"Liar."

"Spike, I'm busy, please go away and annoy someone else."

"That's just rude. Here's me trying to help you see the error of your ways and all you can do is snap at me! How ungrateful."

Giles removed his glasses, dangerous lights twinkling in his normally placid eyes, "I'll give you 10 seconds," he said, voice low and full of promises of pain, "If you're not gone by then I will stake you."

"Alright, I'm goin'. You just get all pissy 'cause you know I'm right."

Spike left, leaving Giles massaging his forehead in tribute to yet another headache. Spike was right, of course he was right; he had the uncanny skill of always being right when Giles was wrong, he knew it and didn't want to admit it. It was no longer a matter of right and wrong, it wasn't if they could do it, the question was whether they should.

It was unlikely that any of the gang would act without Giles permission, though he disliked the phrase, so he was very aware that he had to come to a decision soon. The worst-case scenario was clear, they could die, they could all die, and through their death the earth could be doomed. They could either fight the way they'd always done, bluffing their way through the fight with no help, wait for this fate which according to the prophecy was inevitable. Or they could perform the spell, summon an angel, or whatever creature was using that name, and if they were wrong about them being able to help bring forward the time of their demise.

* * *

Quatre was gone. Trowa came to this conclusion after his fourth circuit of the house, to tell the truth he'd come to that conclusion after the first circuit, but in something of this magnitude he had to be certain.

The situation had been identified; Quatre was missing, what were the possible reasons for this? He had gone somewhere of his own free will, this explanation was almost certainly not the correct one, Quatre made a point of telling people when he was going on an outing. He would never vanish without a word. The second option, Quatre had left of his own free will but the reason for his departure was something he did not want Trowa to know about. Again, this was almost certainly not the case; Quatre had no secrets from Trowa. The third option was that Quatre had been taken against his will. This was by far the most likely option.

The evidence for abduction was definetly there. The gardening tools were still laid out beside a flowerbed in the grounds indicating the departure had been hurried and unplanned. However all the keys, money and clothes Quatre owned were still in their rightful places with no sign of any interference, this eliminated the idea of a rushed departure. Most importantly, Quatre had not been seen leaving through the front gate by the man who sat in a hut there to meet visitors, he had not left that way.

The only logical conclusion from all this evidence was that Quatre had not planned to leave; he had not known he was leaving and had therefore been taken by another party. He had not left through the gate, but had been abducted, probably from the garden and access had been gained over the walls round the land.

Once this conclusion had been reached, there was only one course of action. Trowa could not sit and brood and get upset over the situation, there was no point in that. No, he would find Quatre, of course he would. He would need help, and that was the first thing he would do, get help. He headed for the phone to call Duo, Heero and Wufei. This would be their reunion, he spared only a moments thought for the fact that it wasn't under the best circumstances.

* * *

Illiana was doing what she did best, sulking. Discovering that werewolves, vampires, witches and shape shifters were all real had only made a temporary impact on her behaviour, finding out that she was the witch child and therefore more than slightly important in this bizarre supernatural world had made more of a lasting impression. These day's, when she sulked, she was convinced that because of her importance everyone had to pay attention to her and do their best to make her happy. Not many people agreed with that so her sulking was now received worse than it had ever been before.

On this particular occasion, her sulk had been caused by being told that she "sucked" by her little brother. That just wasn't right, he was only a baby, he wasn't supposed to know words like suck let alone be disrespectful enough to tell her she sucked. She lay on her bed, head buried moodily in her pillow. Hearing the noise didn't make her look up, she assumed that it was her mother coming upstairs to try and comfort her.

The silence went on a little too long. Suspiciously, she raised her head a little, frowned. There wasn't anyone standing in the doorway. A low cough made her turn round; the person who'd made the noise had come in through the window.

The look on her face was quite amusing, Hunter thought to himself, as he watched the surprise cross over her face. She was tiny, delicate, and blonde like the others they'd taken. She was supposedly very powerful, a wild power or something, she really didn't look it; there was no way she could do anything to him.

"Who are you?" she asked, trying to sound brave but her voice shook a little.

"Hunter." He did love the double meaning of his name, the connotations of it made any introduction just a little more special.

"What do you want?"

"What do you think?" he was slowly moving closer to her, she wasn't really noticing, focused on his eyes she hadn't yet thought to run or scream.

"I don't know. If I did I wouldn't have asked." It was always surprising, just how many people felt brave enough to make smart comments when they were being threatened.

He'd reached her bed now, she realised that he might have less than good intentions, she tried to stand and run. He laughed, grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him. She kicked, tried to scream, his hand took care of that.

"Shush," he spoke right into her ear, softly, "You're not getting away."

Illiana was terrified; the man pulled her to the window. She had no idea what he was doing, what he wanted with her. "Close your eyes." He told her in the same creepy, soft voice, "You're going to learn how to fly."

Before she could even understand what he was saying, he'd thrown her out of the window; she didn't even get a chance to scream before she was caught by a very large man. He smiled at her, a broad friendly smile; she felt a sharp pain and everything went black.

"Three down two to go." Xavier raised his eyebrows at Hunter, "You're good at this. No wonder Nidhogg's sending you out on all of these."

"Don't even mention that name to me. Just don't."

* * *

Illiana was gone. Keller and Galen couldn't decide if they were sad about that or not. On the one hand she'd made it possible for them to be together by sacrificing her right to marry Galen, but on the other hand she was very very annoying. Living in a safe house with her and her family for several months had brought both of them to the brink of murdering her on many occasions.

"Where do you suppose she'll have gone?" Galen asked, surveying her room, to which she had retreated just an hour previously to sulk.

"So we're assuming she's run away? She's not that stupid." Keller's voice clearly implied that she thought Illiana was still pretty stupid.

Galen thought about it, was this just Keller's overly paranoid mind kicking in or was there actually reason to think Illiana had been taken rather than left on her own? Well, first point, Illiana sulked every other day but this was the first time she'd vanished afterwards. It was cold and dark outside and Illiana loved her comfort, why would she go out in that without a coat? That was out of character. The only way out of the room was through the window, they'd have heard her come down the stairs, and the thought of Illiana climbing out of a second floor window was too ridiculous for words.

"I see. It really doesn't seem likely that she'd run off does it?"

"No. It doesn't." Keller sighed with clear annoyance, "We'll have to try finding her then won't we?"

Great, Galen grumbled to himself, now the stupid girl was taking them out of the comfort of the safe house, into probable danger to look for her. Great.

* * *

New Guys!

Quatre, Heero, Duo, Wufei and Trowa- Gundam Wing

Illiana, Keller and Galen- Night World


	5. Angels

Authors Notes: I can't remember if I mentioned this, but as this is the gundam wing universe, I am assuming that they would have developed some kind of universal language by this time. This explains why everyone from various countries can understand each other.

* * *

Chapter 4

The good thing about Buffy and co was that once a decision was made, things moved very quickly. That was something Giles did like about the group, there was little unnecessary sitting around thinking about the plan they'd chosen, they just up and did it. Willow and Dawn had gone out to buy ingredients, the rest of them were preparing the house for the execution of the spell and the possible arrival of an angel.

"So, what should we be expecting from this angel? Long white robe, halo, fluffy wings?" Xander asked cheerily as he moved sofas and easily singed carpets out of the spell casting space.

"I have no idea." Giles admitted reluctantly, "The traditional view of angels may have some basis in fact but then again it may not. Angels could be far more like demons than legend has led us to believe, or indeed far more human. We must be prepared for it to be angry at being summoned; I sincerely doubt that it's something that happens regularly."

"So we might end up with a massively pissed off servant of God in the room? Bring on the hell fire!"

"Quite." Giles rubbed his forehead; he was more worried about how the angel might react, if it turned up, than he was willing to let on. These creatures were supposed to be some of the most powerful beings in existence, annoying one would be most unwise he was sure. They also weren't even sure what type of angel they'd be getting. Most legends were very clear, there were different angel ranks and different angels had different roles and abilities. He was just hoping they wouldn't end up with a very annoyed angel of death.

Xander sensed that Giles was not in the mood to joke about what might turn up and he subsided. He wasn't particularly worried about it, he never really was, he had faith in the ability of those around him to kill things before he got hurt and on some levels that was all that mattered to him. Xander was well aware that out of all his friends he was definitely the weakest and most useless. He was the comic relief, the one who needed rescuing and the one who gave the others the opportunity to show off. He was quite happy with that position and got on with it quietly.

Buffy had watched this exchange quietly. She wasn't worried about what was going to happen, she was confident that they could survive anything that got thrown at them. It was an angel they were summoning after all, not a demon or anything like that. Giles was just getting worked up for no reason, like he always did. She wasn't particularly inclined to believe this prophecy either. Evil forces did not unite, especially not with dead alien snakes from the past.

"We'll get started as soon as Willow gets back," there was no sense in delaying things; Buffy had learnt that long ago.

"We'll start as soon as Willows ready to," Giles corrected her, his voice becoming sharp with the stress he was feeling.

"She'll be ready."

Willow was ready the moment she got back, well; she was ready after a few moments of persuasion. Willow wasn't looking forward to this. It was a difficult spell, more difficult than anything she'd ever attempted and the powers being used were immense, so much could go wrong. It was more than likely that she would try and call this angel and end up with the Devil sitting on the carpet.

She settled into the required spell casting circle which had been drawn onto the wooden floor. Her eyes settled uneasily on the scorch marks from previous disastrous attempts at powerful spells. She was more than a little conscious of the fact that all eyes were on her. Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Xander and Spike standing at a safe distance watching, relying on her to get this right.

She took a deep breath and reached into one of the wooden bowls at her side. It was filled with a powdered mixture; thank god it was a powder because having to hold some of the ingredients would definitely have made her squirm. Making sure she had just enough held firmly in her hand she ran over the complicated words of the spell. Why couldn't they be in English? She thought to herself with mild irritation, spells are much easier to learn if you speak the language they're in.

Taking another deep breath, she used her free hand to light the small fire set just in front of her crossed legs. Another deep breath, she threw the powder into the fire and started to chant.

As always happened in Willows spell casting, at first, nothing happened. It was frustrating, probably mainly down to nerves, as always. She took up another handful, threw it into the fire and began the chant again. She felt a slight tug somewhere below her rib cage, a clear sign that she was starting to access the power needed. Another handful went into the fire, the chant began again and this time it was different.

Another annoying point about powerful spells, the correct chant or words are never recorded, they only come once the power does and you're actually casting the spell. Willow tried to keep track of what she was saying as the words flowed out of her, she could barely hear them over the deafening rushing sound in her ears. She needed to know what she was saying, what she was doing and what she was calling.

Why aren't these things in English? She thought angrily, the words going too fast for her to translate them. She could be saying anything. Damn it, damn it. She hated it when this happened. It was her saying the words and her power being used but she really had very little idea what was actually happening. All she could do was hold on tight and wait and see what would happen at the end of it all.

As suddenly as it had begun it finished. There was the obligatory gust of cold air, the wave of energy spreading out from the point in front of her breaking glass and other delicate things, the flash of light and a bang. The bang was accompanied by a strange shimmering hole opening in the ceiling. Out of this tumbled a figure dressed in black, completely uncontrollably and unceremoniously, it fell flat onto its face on the carpet and lay still.

In the following silence no one moved or spoke. They all just stared and took in the thing that had appeared. It was human in form with the normal number of arms and legs, no scales or tentacles as far as they could see and definitely no wings. Aside from that it was very small, that was obvious even without it being upright. It was dressed all in black with large impressive black boots. The only other distinguishing feature they could identify considering it's position face down on the floor was that it's hair was red, bright, almost luminous red. Even gender would have been a guess.

Before anyone could speak or even move, it wriggled. Rolling onto its back it showed itself to be definitely male, young, not much more than a teenager despite the large tattoo of a dragon on the left side of his face. On catching sight of them, he scowled heavily and jumped to his feet.

"What the fuck am I doing here?" he demanded, pointing a finger at them accusingly, "Did you bastards _summon_ me?"

Giles took it upon himself to answer, "Are you an angel?"

"Of course I'm a fucking angel!" was the agitated response, the angel's voice filled with unmistakeable anger, "Why did you summon me? Make it quick before I _kill _all of you!"

Buffy almost laughed, it was quite funny hearing the threats coming out of the mouth of a short teenage boy, if he was an angel or not. Luckily, Giles glared at her and she made a greater effort to smother her giggles.

"We've got a slight problem and we were told that you were the only person who could help us." Giles explained carefully, "We need to go back in time and bring some people forward to help us. You see, evil forces are planning to destroy the earth."

The angel raised his eyebrows, then burst out laughing. The laugh was more than a little worrying, a little chilling, "And why the hell should I help you? Do you think I'm some kind of mercenary? That you can just summon me and I'll help you for nothing? Maybe I'd quite like it if these evil forces destroyed the earth."

"You're an angel, you're supposed to help." Dawn protested, much to Giles annoyance.

The angel glared, "What do you know about what I'm supposed to do?"

"We don't know. In fact we thought you were a myth," this from Giles prompted a smile, "Who are you? What…what kind of angel are you?"

The angels smile didn't fade, much to Giles relief who hadn't been sure how he would take the enquiry, "I'm the Archangel of Fire, the General of the Heavenly Armies and the Chief of the Powers. My name is Michael." A slight pause, "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Rupert Giles. This is Buffy, Buffy is the slayer."

Michael wrinkled his nose, "Slayer? You're a slayer? I can see why you need help. Fuck. You're the slayer? Don't the fates have standards anymore?"

"Hey!" Buffy looked suitably pissed off and Giles hastened to intervene yet again.

"Buffy has achieved a lot and has saved the world from destruction many times. She's more powerful than she looks."

"She must be," was the dismissive response. Michael appeared to be relaxing, his anger was lessening and he was glancing around the room, taking in his surroundings. His eyes fell on Willow, who had gotten to her feat by now and retreated into the group, "So you summoned me. It's been a long time since I met a good and powerful witch." He paused again, "Why did you want me around again?"

Giles explained, "We need this…SG-1 team to defeat this…Goa'uld." He finished, watching Michael anxiously.

Michael considered for a moment, just as he was about to open his mouth and speak he froze, his entire body tensed. He seemed to listen for a moment, a strange expression spread across his face, somewhere between surprise and happiness. Without a word he headed for the door, yanked it open and vanished up the street running.

Oblivious to the frantic scramble to follow him, Michael ran up the road all his senses focused on locating the thing he had heard…or rather sensed. When someone dies, really dies, their body and soul are sent far from this world. When one of these souls renters the world, any angel who is near enough to the point of reentry will sense it. Thanks to a rather over active guardian of the nothingness of death, this was a relatively common occurrence and in itself not enough to send Michael running to the source. It had done so this time, because Michael had sensed something familiar in the soul, or rather souls, which had been thrust back into life.

Michael followed his senses. Left, right, left along roads, across gardens and even through a couple of hedges until he was standing in a small clearing in a forest, staring at the two people he had found there. It wasn't exactly who he was expecting, but they were still familiar figures.

"Well, well, well, so I wasn't the only one who got summoned today."

The two people swung round to face him, shocked and wary. He could understand that. Kato should have been dead, all the way dead, and the last time Kira (Lucifer? A sword? Who knew?) had been alive it had been in a completely different body.

"Michael?" he demanded now, staring at him, "What the hell are you doing here? Why the hell are we here?"

Kira aka Lucifer aka Lucifel was in fact Michaels twin brother. That was before he became the closest thing to the devil that there is. Tall, thin, shoulder length brown hair and a distinctly drugged up appearance; something more different from Michael was hard to imagine. That was partly explained by the fact that this wasn't his original body or his original mind really. The person standing in front of Michael only contained parts of his brother.

"Got summoned." Michael replied lightly, "To save the world."

"Bet they didn't want us as well," Kato mused. Totally correct in his assumption of course.

Kato's link to those present was slightly more tenuous. He was a friend of Kira's. Shorter, with bleach blond hair and looking much more drugged up than Kira. A friend. That was all he'd been until he died, killed by an angel his after life had been far more significant than his real life. He'd died at least twice more after that, his final death at the hands of Kira in his robotic Lucifer like state. He could remember it all, but he wasn't entirely sure that Kira could, damn was this awkward.

Michael was looking at him with slightly raised eyebrows, "Don't you ever die?"

Kato couldn't think of a suitable reply to that, but Kira chuckled, the sound of this confirmed that he was much more Kira, who had been the guardian of the inorganic angel Alexial, than Lucifer. Lucifer would never have chuckled at such a joke, it wasn't nearly evil enough.

"Who summoned you?" Kira continued the conversation effortlessly, as if there hadn't been an awkward silence.

"The slayer, how random is that?" of course neither Kira nor Kato were sufficiently angelic to know what a slayer was, "Yeah, some alien snake is trying to take over the world and they need me to go back in time and collect some group of alien snake fighters."

As Michael had not troubled to disguise the direction in which he'd run, he'd been followed, slightly more slowly, by Buffy and co. They had now reached the clearing and were staring at the three of them, not at all sure what to make of them. Were these two angels too? They obviously knew Michael, but why were they here?

"These are the guys that summoned me!" Michael had noticed them and was waving an arm in their general direction.

A short silence followed as Buffy and co waited for some further explanation. Michael wasn't about to provide it and stood with his arms loosely folded, eyes darting between the two groups twinkling with amusement. Kira decided to take things into his own hands.

"I'm Kira, this is Kato…we're…friends of Michaels." He thought it was safest to use friend to describe their complicated relationship.

"Rupert Giles," was the automatic and polite response, realising that he hadn't even introduced the rest of the gang to Michael yet he did so quickly.

Michael was intrigued to discover that the young red haired witch was called Willow, the dark haired man was Xander and the small girl was Dawn. "Hey, where'd the blonde guy go?" He asked, realising that one member of the gang was missing.

"Spikes a vampire." Giles answered promptly.

"He's allergic to sunlight," Xander added, in case Michael wasn't familiar with vampires. The assumption that he might not be totally up to speed with creatures of darkness caused a raised eyebrow but no comment.

Dawn meanwhile was still staring at Kira and Kato with fascination, "Are you angels too?"

"Erm…no."

"We're dead," Kato explained cheerfully, "I was human. Kira was…a lot of things. I don't know why we're here though, I was supposed to be dead, totally dead, dead as in not in the after life dead. So was he."

"Summoning spell must have gone a little wrong. You two must be more attached to me than you think. Summon me and you get a little extra," sharp eyes which had been roaming around lazily now fixed themselves on Giles, "Now I've picked up these two. Shall we go back to your place and sort this stuff out?"

* * *

Patience, Paige told herself for the hundredth time that week, patience. Put yourself in her shoes, remember what it was like to want something and not be allowed to have it. Stay calm. Stay reasonable.

"You can't go." Paige had been saying these three words over and over again for the last week and was starting to get sick of them. Sometimes Savannah managed to be mature, responsible and almost grown up, and then the rest of the time she was almost ridiculously childish.

"Why not? It's not like I can't look after myself." was the stubborn, and expected, response.

"I wouldn't feel comfortable with it. I don't know these people and therefore you can't go."

Well, the one advantage of arguing about it for the past week was that Savannah had run out of steam and arguments by this point, made a disgusted noise and ran upstairs to her room muttering the obligatory, "I hate you" comment. Paige had also run out of steam and arguments, and did not follow to continue the conversation.

Meanwhile Savannah was not nearly as annoyed at Paige's continued refusal as she pretended to be. She was going to go and meet her friends anyway; she'd decided that the first time she'd been refused. She had only asked again tonight in the vain hope that she wouldn't have to disobey Paige. She didn't really want to, but Paige had forced her hand.

She had everything ready in her room, her bag, her outfit which she had painstakingly selected days previously. It only took her a few minutes to get ready and then she was effortlessly climbing out of the window. This wasn't the first time she'd snuck out, she had more than enough practice getting out.

Nidhogg giggled, Hunter flinched. When Nidhogg had announced his intention to go on the next kidnapping trip, Hunter had assumed that he would be exempt. No. That was not the plan, Nidhogg wanted to watch Hunter suffer first hand. To stir things up further, he'd also decided to bring Dracula.

Dracula and Hunter had discovered early on that they did not mix. Dracula, on discovering that Hunter was several hundred years younger than himself he had become unbearably patronizing. Hunter had tried to stake him in his sleep. Nidhogg was most amused, so he'd dragged both Hunter and Dracula on this trip. Their mission, to kidnap a very powerful teenage witch called Savannah Levine.

Now they were hidden in the bushes in the front garden of the house opposite to Savannahs, watching and waiting for their opportunity. Personally, Hunter would have hidden somewhere else, but you just DON'T argue with Nidhogg. Nidhogg was giggling because the girl they were after had just climbed out of the window.

"Are you having fun?" he asked sweetly, turning to Hunter and Dracula, "Isn't this a lovely day out?"

This is the main problem with people who have been around since the beginning of time, they are absolutely crazy. Hunter bit his lip to stop himself from commenting and meekly followed Nidhogg out from behind the bush and down the street. He would have asked if they should have been slightly more subtle and sneaky, but Nidhogg seemed to know what he was doing. Hunter hoped. He really really hoped.

Hunter was not very familiar with magic. The witches he'd met were generally not very powerful, but he had read about some of the spells they could perform. There was one that sounded particularly unpleasant, sucking all the air out of your lungs and suffocating you. Nice. He knew he wouldn't be able to go up against someone like that, not without the element of surprise, but Nidhogg was another matter. What exactly Nidhogg's powers were was not clear to Hunter, but he was very sure they were going to be impressive once they were unveiled.

This girl didn't seem particularly dangerous or particularly intelligent; she had yet to notice that she was being stalked by three strange men, none of whom looked particularly friendly. No survival skills at all.

Nidhogg was smiling, "she knows we're here."

"What?" Dracula demanded, "She hasn't noticed a thing." If it was possible, Dracula hated Nidhogg's superiority more than Hunter.

"Oh please, no ones quite that oblivious to the world around them. In a few minutes she'll turn down an alley way or a dead end and try and ambush us." Nidhogg smiled smugly, "Really, it's obvious."

Hunter liked it when Nidhogg was belittling someone else, he really did. Nidhogg wasn't that bad really, when he wasn't playing with you, really, he was quite a nice guy.

Just as Nidhogg had predicted, the girl turned left suddenly into an opening too narrow to be anything but an alleyway. To be fair, Nidhogg tried not to look too smug about being totally right.

"So, what are we going to do? What's the plan?" he did not want to just walk down there hoping for the best.

"Plan?" Nidhogg asked, looking at him blankly.

"How are we going to get her before she has a chance to, you know, cast a spell?"

"Oh there's no need to worry about that. Just stand back and watch. You're only here to help carry her."

Hunter resolved to stand well back, Dracula came to the same decision and Nidhogg entered the alley a considerable distance ahead of both of them. He wasn't at all worried, that was clear, but Hunter was not at all certain that was a correct course of action for the rest of the world.

There didn't appear to be anyone in the alleyway at first, but Nidhogg was expecting that. He looked directly at a blank spot on the wall halfway down it and sniggered, "Ohhhh, cover spell, that's cute!"

A slight rustle and the girl reappeared, eyes slightly wider than before but with no other visible signs of fear.

"Why are you following me?"

"Guess! No, really, guess, go on!" Nidhogg's wide smile looked friendly and inviting, unless you knew who he was and the phrase "dread biter" kept running through your head. He took a few casual steps forward.

"Don't you come near me!" the girls voice was cold and confident, "I'm warning you I'll hurt you."

A chuckle, "Oh isn't that adorable!" he cooed. The girl was making tiny hand movements, Nidhogg raised his own hands, "I think you'll find that won't work."

Fear came now as something she was trying to do obviously failed. Her hands moved again, faster, Nidhogg just watched, own hands still raised and smiling beautifully. Again she tried and gasped, hands reaching for the wall behind her to steady now wobbly legs.

"I am sorry," Nidhogg began, with sincerity in his voice, "It's a horrible feeling, having someone drink in your power, your magic. There are other ways to stop you casting, but those take longer and aren't nearly as subtle. I am sorry."

"Please…stop it." A frightened child, powerful witch, but still a frightened child.

Nidhogg dropped his hands, but there was a tiny flick that accompanied the potentially merciful gesture. The girl fell to the floor unconscious. No one moved. Nidhogg stared at the girls' body and sighed. The moment held a little longer. He turned, smile back in place.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Pick her up minions, that's what you're here for."

Note to self. Hunter thought as he helped Dracula pick the girl up. Nidhogg is powerful and definitely NOT a frightened child…no matter how young he looks.

* * *

Giles had hoped that the small excursion and the discovery of his friends might have made Michael slightly more open to doing what they wanted, but that turned out not be the case. Having settled down at the dining room table, Michael and instantly announced that he had no intention of helping them out and would be leaving them as soon as he'd figured out how he was going to take Kira and Kato with him.

"But you can't. We need your help." Buffy protested, "The prophecy says we can't defeat this evil without your help. You can't leave."

"I can," came the instant smug response, "you can't stop me. I don't have time to help you."

"Why not?"

"Because since God vanished, the lazy bugger, I'm in charge of heaven. Not just this planets pathetic little heaven, the heaven, and that's a hell of a lot of work. If I spend my time running around down here, there could be trouble on more than one planet."

This extraordinary little speech created a small, astonished silence as everyone tried to assimilate exactly what the tiny angel had just told them.

"What do you mean, since God vanished?" Giles demanded eventually.

Michael sighed and swore under his breath, "I shouldn't have said that." He confessed, sounding like a guilty child now, "Things in heaven aren't as they should be. I can't say any more than that. I need to go back."

"But you're an angel," Dawn couldn't see past her childish conviction that angels were good being, "You're supposed to help. You can't let people die!"

"The greater good," Kato mumbled softly, "Sometimes you have to make sacrifices." Michael and Kira both nodded, they knew the sacrifices Kato had made so that good could triumph. Kira knew the evil he'd done to make sure that some good could come out of all the bad and Michael, as an angel of war, knew better than most the meaning of sacrifice for the greater good.

But not everyone could understand Kato. Xander jumped to his feet, angry with the threes casual dismissal of their plight, he grabbed Michael and pulled him to his feet. "Who gave you the right to decide what the greater good is? What gives you the right to decide whether this planet is worth saving?"

Michael stared at the hands holding onto the front of his top, it was a long time since anyone had dared treat him like this. He hardly listened at what Xander was shouting at him, he was getting angry! Up until this point, Michael thought he'd been very reasonable about the whole thing. Against his wishes he'd been sucked into a portal and transported to the earth where he'd then been calmly treated like a common demon who'd offer his services just because they didn't have anything better to do. He should just have melted them all there and then, but he hadn't, he'd listened, tried to bring them down gently and now this…idiot…was attacking him? Oh boy was Michael getting angry and when Michael got angry…he got hot.

Xander noticed the heat spreading through his fingers and let go hurriedly. Michael didn't look so small and human anymore. Fists clenched, eyes darkening, tattoo wriggling across his skin, heat radiating off him and a red glow starting to surround him. He looked every bit a powerful fire angel.

"What gives me the right?" he repeated, voice shaking as he tried not to shout, "I'm fucking standing in for GOD. I think I'm a little bit qualified," his voice rose in volume despite his best efforts, "You haven't got a fucking CLUE. It isn't about if it's worth saving or not. It's about if we CAN. I can't just vanish back in time. Its. Not. Possible!"

The red glow had turned to flames by now and nearby furniture and the floor was getting slightly scorched. If things had been allowed to continue, this would probably have been the end. Michael would have burnt everything in the vicinity to a crisp. A resistance to the evil forces would never have grown and the world would rapidly race to its doom. Luckily, things weren't allowed to continue. Kira stepped him.

"Enough!" He said firmly, getting to his feet. There was enough of the big brother that Michael remembered in the voice to stop him in his tracks, "Stop it Michael."

And now he sounded just like another someone who Michael sometimes obeyed. So he did stop. Slowly the flames vanished, things got decidedly cooler and Michael was left looking like a normal sulky teenager now.

"Michaels right. He can't just leave heaven and run off, but he won't quite be leaving it if he goes now."

"What?" Michael demanded, slightly annoyed that Kira had managed to stop him destroying everything within a mile radius with a few calm words, "There's no one else!"

"Raphael."

Michael laughed, "Raphael isn't in charge! I outrank him!"

"Yes, you do, but if you vanish he won't just let everything fall apart will he? He'll take over. You can go do what these people want and be sure that everything's being looked after."

If it was possible, Michael was looking even smaller than he did normally as he realised that Kira was perfectly right. Raphael ruled with him as it was, taking care of all the matters Michael considered boring. He'd almost certainly take over and he'd do it well and enjoy it, "You're right," he admitted reluctantly, glaring round the table, daring anyone to comment.

"Does that mean you'll go?" Giles asked tentatively, following a lengthy pause.

Michael sighed in defeat, "I suppose…it might be fun."

"What about us?" Kato asked, suddenly realising that Michaels departure would leave them stranded.

An evil glint appeared in the fiery angel's eyes as they fixed on Kira who shifted nervously under the intense scrutiny, "You can come with me."

Delighted smiles lit up round the table at the two boy's obvious horror at the statement, "But I wanted a quiet death!" Kato whimpered, sniffing theatrically.

* * *

Paige couldn't decide which to be, furious or worried. Savannah was gone; she'd chosen to disregard Paige's decision and had gone. She could be with anyone, anywhere, anything could have happened to her! Ok, fine Paige was worried. Savannah had been gone for hours now. Longer than the time she'd asked for. Which was understandable, it was unlikely she was looking forward to coming home and being confronted by Paige and Lucas sitting in the front room with disappointed looks on their faces.

Lucas did not totally share Paige's anxiety, but that was understandable. He had said many times that Savannah was a very capable young witch and was more than capable of looking after herself. Luckily that didn't mean he wasn't prepared to sit up and worry with her.

"She should have been home by now." Paige said for the hundredth time.

"Give her another hour," Lucas replied, though as it was nearly 1am he was starting to realise that there would soon be reason to worry.

"There's got to be a spell we can use to locate her. A sorcerer spell?"

Lucas thought about it, "There is a locator spell," he said slowly, "It's very difficult and I'm not sure it would be a good idea to resort to that."

"I am sure, I need to know where she is."

Lucas gave in. He wasn't at all certain of his and Paige's' ability to perform the spell correctly in a way that didn't result in burnt carpets and singed curtains, but he was willing to try. He also wasn't going to mention the fact that it wasn't actually a sorcerer spell. It was a spell that the Cables had tortured out of a rogue witch that had performed spells no one had ever heard of, let alone seen. It was entirely unpredictable, because no sorcerer really knew how to perform them.

As they settled cross legged on Paige's spell casting mat with a map spread between them, he reflected that the unpredictability of the spell was probably down to the fact that it had been stripped of 90 of its original ingredients and reduced to a few tiny hand movements.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Ok then." He'd cast this spell once before, to locate a cat, it had worked…but he wasn't sure if it would work again and with a person. Well, he'd soon find out. A deep breath and he flicked his fingers, reciting the few words needed. "Ga, vind haar, ik van denk."

As had happened the first time, a small light appeared and hovered in-between them. As before, it seemed to study the map for a few moments. Then things changed. The light quivered, and then it started to expand massively and formed a huge glowing ball. Three gaps opened up in it, creating a face that was unmistakeably looking at him. It grinned.

"Ohhhh….I knew someone would try this! Clever person!" It cooed, with great joy, "Shame it won't work. This is officially your spell getting blocked! I'd duck…this thing explodes."

He ducked, the ball exploded in a rush of warm light. It wasn't that dangerous, but still. Paige had done the same. She raised her head slowly, "I think, we can assume, that something's gone wrong."

"Yes."

"I think we should call Elena."

"Yes."

* * *

"Well that's settled." Said Buffy, once it had sunk in that Michael was agreeing to go, "What will you need?"

"Need?"

"For whatever spell you need. Willow can get you all the ingredients," she turned to Willow, who nodded eagerly.

"Spells? I don't need any spells. I can go now." He reached out and grabbed both Kira and Kato by their elbows, "Where am I going?"

"Stargate Command base in 2003." Giles answered promptly.

"Ok then. We'll be seeing you!" He gave a sharp nod, there was a small gust of wind and the three of them vanished, heading for 2003, hundreds of years previous.

* * *

Ok, new guys. We have:

Paige, Lucas and Savannah-all kelly armstrong peoples

Kira, Kato and Michael-Angel Sanctuary


	6. God in a cell

**AUTHORS NOTES: **Ok, my excuse for any weirdness in this chapter is that the vast majority was written right after a 3-hour English literature exam, my brain was leaking out of my ears. The shock of getting reviews from people other than Jess didn't help either, it confused me and made me paranoid that nothing I write is good enough. However I am over that, thank you for the reviews, and here is chapter 5! Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 5

The strange thing about working for a secret military organisation involved in protecting the earth from aliens is that it can get very, very boring. Aliens don't attack the earth none stop week in week out, months can go past without anything remotely interesting happening. This had been one of those months and Jack was getting well and truly fed up with endless paperwork and theory and all those annoying little things that badass military colonels really shouldn't bother about.

He was sitting in his office terrorising paper clips and praying for some evil plot that would give him something to DO! Damnit! He needed action and a reason to shoot people. This was no way for him to spend his time, he was highly trained and experienced, oh he was wallowing. He'd better do something productive or he'd just end up terrorising other stationary, not just the paperclips. With a sigh, he stood and left to see if anything more interesting was happening in the command room. He doubted it but he could go and see.

On arrival in the command room, the air of boredom almost suffocated him. Instead of being a hive of busy activity as it normally was, everyone was slouching in their chairs, playing with pens and paper and not paying any attention to their various computer screens. That was understandable, even the computers were blinking more sluggishly than normal. Carter and Daniel were sitting at the table at the back of the room, looking suspiciously like they were playing noughts and crosses.

"Carter! Please tell me something interesting is happening here," and the paper vanished very quickly underneath some files.

"Not really sir."

"Shame," he slid into a chair next to them, "So what are you doing?"

"Just going over some files," Daniel blushed slightly and stared studiously at the papers on the desk provoking a laugh.

He stared out at the gate, frowning at it, willing it to do something…and it burst into life. The jolt round the room was visible. Everyone sat up straighter and blinked at it in disbelief. Ok, something was happening and it had taken everyone by surprise.

"Address?" Jack snapped in the direction of whoever should be monitoring these kinds of things.

"Not one we know sir," came the prompt response, maybe everyone wasn't quite as asleep as they looked.

With impeccable timing, General Hammond appeared in the room looking suitably grumpy, "What's going on?"

"Unknown address," Jack supplied, watching as the gate room filled with troops.

"Well get down there."

Oh Jack was looking forward to this, finally something to, finally some action! He just hoped what was coming through the gate wasn't coming in peace, or someone they already knew, that would just be a let down. Jack stood in the small gap left by the troops for whichever high up official was delegated to talk to the new arrivals. He was joined by the rest of the team and they all stared eagerly into the swirling blue waiting for something to happen.

Without warning, the iris closed over the opening. "What the…?" Jack looked up to the command room and saw equally confused expressions up there.

"It wasn't us Colonel," Hammonds annoyed voice came through the speakers.

Just as everyone started to relax and exchange confused glances with their neighbours, three figures appeared, stepping through the iris. Yes, stepping through the impenetrable iris. Well, one figure stepped, one stumbled and one appeared to be thrown to the floor.

"We have arrived!" The upright figure announced loudly and smugly, "Impressed?"

"I hate you!" The figure on the floor announced, scrambling to its feet before freezing at the sight of a room filled with soldiers.

Jack stared. Whatever he'd been expecting it wasn't this. Three boys, none of them older than 18. The middle one, the upright one, had hair a luminous shade of red, was rather short and had a tattoo of a dragon covering one side of his face. The stumbling one was the tallest, with shoulder length dark hair, and an amused smirk on his face. The final one, the one who had fallen flat on his face, wasn't that tall either with shoulder length blonde hair and a very pissed off expression as he cradled an arm against his chest, wincing.

"And who are you?" Jack asked, finally finding his voice. Jack rendered speechless, this was an unusual occasion.

"Is this stargate headquarters?" The middle one didn't show much sign of having heard Jacks question, which annoyed him.

"We're not answering your questions until you tell us who you are." Jack almost felt Daniel twitch nervously next to him at the lack of diplomacy.

The boy's eyes narrowed, "And I'm not telling you who I am until you tell me if I'm in the right place. Is this stargate headquarters?"

The tall one muttered something, earning him a sharp look and a hissed response. Daniel decided that this was going to very quickly end up as a stalemate if he didn't step in straight away.

"This is stargate command. My name is Dr Daniel Jackson, Colonel O'Neill, Sam Carter and Teal'c. You are?"

A pause, an evil grin, "Now tell me, is this where I can find SG-1?"

Another muttered comment, another hissed response.

Things might have stayed at a stalemate for quite some time, but a soldier, on the left, made some kind of sudden movement. The middle boys head snapped round and in an action that looked more reflex than anything else, lifted his hand. The solider was picked up and thrown against the wall with a horrible cracking sound on impact.

Silence.

Pause.

Jack gave a nod to the soldiers on stand by whose guns did not hold bullets but strong tranquilizer darts. The darts floored the two boys on the edge in seconds, the middle one stayed upright a little longer before also dropping to the floor. Jack had the feeling this was going to prove to be a very interesting few days.

* * *

"First question, who are they?" Hammond asked the assembled company of SG-1 in the briefing room after the new arrivals had been safely locked into the most secure cell available in the base.

"We don't know," Daniel jumped in before Jack could make an unhelpful statement, "But they obviously know who we are."

"No, they know stargate and they know SG-1, but they didn't recognise our names." Carter corrected him, "They don't know that much really."

"We can be definite they're not Goa'uld?"

"Definite," Carter continued, "There doesn't appear to be any evidence that they're anything apart from human."

"Apart from the fact that they activated the gate and can walk through an iris," Jack pointed out.

"Apart from that," Carter agreed.

"So, what do we actually know about them?" Hammond demanded, showing his frustration now.

"Not a great deal," Teal'c replied in his calm voice, "They are not Goa'uld or any other species we have encountered, yet they know who we are. They do not appear hostile, but attacked when they felt threatened. They are not armed, yet they could still injure. They are children but do not act as such."

"Wow that was thorough."

The response was a slight, smug, bow of the head.

"So basically, we don't really know anything."

"Indeed, O'Neill."

"So what do we do with them?" Daniel, as always, moving the conversation sensibly forward.

"We have to assume they're hostile. They've severely injured one of my men. Colonel, I want to know who they are and what they're doing here. Dismissed."

"So what's the plan Jack?"

Ahhh, Jack just loved it when Daniel acknowledged his authority, "We go talk to Janet."

Janet was in the observation room watching the occupants of SG-1's most secure cell curiously. The cell, loosely named, was a large white room, mostly it was empty and the most it ever held was the correct number of beds for its occupants. At the moment it also held SG-1's latest visitors. Two of them were awake, the one who'd done the fighting and the tall one, the other was still unconscious.

"So Janet, what do you know?" Jack asked casually, looking into the cell with similar interest.

"Well, they're not all the same. We barely had a chance to take a look at that one," she pointed to the red haired one, "Before he started coming round. He's got a mostly human physiology, but the way he shook off that tranquilizer is not human. That tall one, he's very strange, again, mostly human physiology but he's got a few…quirks… that we're struggling to figure out. The last one is totally human, absolutely nothing strange about that one."

"So we have two aliens and a human?"

"Possible. Or we could have three humans two of who have either evolved to have some unfamiliar traits or who have been engineered to have some alien traits."

"Would the Goa'uld have the technology to engineer them in this way?" Sam asked thoughtfully.

"It's possible." Janet allowed, though she didn't look too sure.

"So we could still be dealing with the Goa'uld?"

"Not necessarily. Indirectly maybe."

"Daniel, wanna explain that for me?"

"They asked for SG1. If they've been engineered by the Goa'uld we can logically assume that they didn't ask for it and it wasn't exactly done with their best interests at heart. Maybe they were asking for SG1 to ask for help. Not to fight."

Jack sighed, trust Daniel to come up with a perfectly logical and peaceful explanation that got neatly in the way of treating them as evil spies who needed to be removed. "So how do we find out?"

"Let me talk to them." Again trust Daniel to suggest the talking, at least he always volunteered for it too, "Let me go in and talk to them."

Jack raised his eyebrows, "Janet, how's that soldier doing? The one they attacked."

"Broken bones, internal bleeding, he hasn't woken up yet."

"You can talk to them, but you're not going in there." Jack leaned forward and pressed the button which would slowly slide the two way mirrors out of the way and leave them with a sheet of reinforced, pretty much everything proof, glass. The two who were awake, jumped to their feet instantly, staring intently up at them. Before Jack pushed the button to open the com system, he could have sworn he saw the small ones lips form the words 'I told you so'.

Slightly taken a back by the suddenness of it all, Daniel cleared his throat nervously and stepped closer to the window, "Erm…hi."

That caused two sets of raised eyebrows below and a slight chuckle from the taller one, who sat back down again on his bed shaking his head in an annoyingly dismissive pose.

"My name is Daniel Jackson, we met earlier. I didn't catch your names…"

A short silence followed, broken by the tall ones tut of irritation, "I'm Kira, this is Michael" a long finger used firmly to jab the red head, "and that's Kato," a vague wave in the direction of the unconscious boy.

Judging by Michael's instantly mutinous expression, it wasn't really Kira's place to take over like this and a muttered comment in Kira's direction must have been rather uncomplimentary judging by the raised eyebrow and sly smile it received in response.

"Oh good…can I ask who you are?"

"Are you SG1?" Michael didn't show any sign of having heard the question.

"We are." Now it was Jack's turn to mutter angrily, "And who are you?"

"I'm the Archangel of Fire, the General of the Heavenly Armies and the Chief of the Powers."

Daniel couldn't help it, such a grand introduction from such a small, strange little person drew a tiny splutter of laughter. No matter how tiny the splutter was, it was enough, Michaels face darkened. Not just his face, his whole body appeared to radiate a dark red glow, his eyes burnt brighter and it got hotter, the heat rising from the…

Daniel looked down for the source of the heat and yelped when he saw the flames springing up from the soles of his shoes. The fact that it was impossible didn't really cross his mind; the fire had to be coming from Michael. Jack appeared to have jumped the same conclusion, a quick order, and the door of the cell was throne open and another tranquilliser dart found its home firmly in Michaels back. Another took care of Kira. Better safe than sorry.

* * *

"So this supposed angel, Michael, can set things on fire with his mind as well as throwing people around just by raising his arm." Jack concluded their account of events and what they now knew to General Hammond in the briefing room, to which they had retreated after Daniel had found some new shoes and had his slightly scorched feet examined by Janet.

"And what about the other two? No signs of any power from them?"

"None." Teal'c confirmed. He'd been ever so slightly amused by the events, setting Daniels shoes on fire when the boy clearly had the power to kill him instantly was such an indication of his lack of maturity.

"But we can assume they're hostile."

"Perhaps not," Daniel wasn't prepared to give up on his peaceful theories just because the slight misunderstanding, "They're feeling pretty cornered right now. They've come here, been greeted by a roomful of guns, then been sedated and throne in a cell before being asked questions which could feel like stupid questions to them and the answer they've given, which may have been truthful, was dismissed. They may consider us just as hostile as we consider them."

"Which means?" Hammond demanded.

"I'd like to talk to them again."

"No way Daniel!" Jack protested instantly, "They could kill us if we even go near them."

"Perhaps, O'Neill, we should attempt to talk to the ones without power. There would be no danger then." Teal'c, great guy, occasionally, he came up with the best ideas.

"The one we can be sure is human," Sam agreed, "He's probably the one who's least likely to be hostile."

"Least likely to be hostile yeah, but do you really think he'll tell us everything we want to know? He probably won't do anything without the other two giving him permission." Jack was sceptical, sometimes separating a team and interrogating them individually worked, but generally only when all members of the team were equal. You couldn't take a solider of the lowest rank and get the generals plans out of him. For one thing they rarely knew all the things you needed to know, and secondly, due to their rank, they were more worried about the punishment for talking than being punished for not talking.

"It's worth a try sir." Carter said, using those pleading eyes Jack was sure were totally unprofessional.

Jack sighed and gave in. They were off, back to try and find out who these people were. They'd barely taken a few steps before Janet appeared from the end of a corridor, "Colonel O'Neill!"

"Shouldn't you be with our guests?"

"Just coming to ask permission to remove Kato, that's the human one, to the infirmary."

"Why? What's happened?" Jack demanded, hoping this situation just hadn't got much worse and now involved…cannibalism or something.

"Nothing. He's just taking longer to come round from the sedation than I'd like, I want to keep a closer eye on him."

"Good! Permission granted, we needed them out of there anyway so we could have a little chat."

Janet didn't look terribly pleased at the prospect of people have a "little chat" with her patient, but she didn't complain, just told them to wait for her to call them down when he started showing signs of consciousness.

* * *

Kato was used to headaches, he lived in an almost constantly hung over state, so waking with a headache that just made him want to curl up and die wasn't at all unusual. So why was his brain telling him there should be something strange about him waking up with this particular headache? Maybe it wasn't the headache; maybe it was general surprise at being alive. Whatever it was he could worry about it later…or not as when he moved there were noises in the room which clearly indicated that he wasn't alone, there were people and these people had been watching him and waiting for him to wake up…and slowly that train of thought developed into a full remembrance of everything, which further developed into a groan and Kato opening his eyes.

He was right, there were people in the room, a lot of them. Also, as he'd suspected, these people were the same people who'd greeted them when they'd arrived and they didn't look too happy. That was understandable, damn Michael and his inability to enter a situation without threatening to kill someone, severely injuring someone or actually killing someone. Damn Michael to hell, Kato would personally escort him there, he knew the way.

"Welcome back." Of the people in the room, it was a brown haired man who looked friendly enough who was speaking, rather than the more senior and angry looking one. These were the two closest to the bed and were clearly going to be the one's asking all the questions. Kato sat up warily and waited, "Your name is Kato, correct?"

"Yes," how did they know his name? Only Michael and Kira could have told them, and the chances of Michael letting Kira cooperate were slim. Talking of Kira and Michael, where were they? Not in this room, a quick scan revealed that much, "Where are the others?"

"Enjoying our wonderful hospitality," the angry looking man replied with an ominous smile.

The brown haired man glared in response, before returning his attention to Kato, "I'm Daniel Jackson, and this is Jack O'Neill. We're part of SG1. You came here to look for us, right?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Hmmm, now that was a tricky question. Kato wasn't too sure. He'd stood there and listened to it being explained to Michael and Kira but hadn't really understood a word, something to do with the end of the world and a snake. Anyway, whatever their reason was, he didn't really want to share it without Kira and Michael there to back him up, so he stayed quiet.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Kato." Why ask that? They'd already told him they knew his name.

"What planet are you from?"

"Earth," he was in a room full of crazy people. Wonderful.

"I mean, which planet do you live on?"

"Earth," definitely crazy crazy people.

A frown, then, "Where on earth are you from?"

"Japan," at least that was a reasonable question.

"How did you get here?" confused faces all round now, Kato didn't know what was confusing about his answers, to him they made perfect sense.

"Michael did it."

"How?"

"I don't know, ask him."

"Yeah, we tried that, he set Daniels shoes on fire," O'Neill mumbled, sounding angry but with a hint of laughter in his voice.

Oh dear, "you must have made him angry."

"I laughed, when he introduced himself. Is he really an angel?"

"Yes."

"Angel as in messenger of God? Please." O'Neill's tone was very clear now.

"Well he doesn't work for God anymore. God vanished. Michael's in charge of heaven now."

"So you're saying, we basically have God in our cells?" incredulous, totally incredulous.

"Well he's doing God's job…"

The boy had to be totally insane Jack concluded, or brainwashed. He was sitting there, with a perfectly straight face and telling them that they were holding God prisoner. Jack prided himself on knowing when someone was lying and this boy looked totally and utterly honest. Either he was the best liar in the world or he honestly believed what he was saying. Or Michael really was God, but that option was too ridiculous to contemplate.

"Look kid, we're not stupid ok? There is no way I'm gonna believe that God decided to come look for us."

"He's not God! He's just looking after heaven for a bit."

"Ok!" Daniel broke in just as Jack was about to tell Kato exactly what he thought of that response, "So we've established that Michael might be an…angel…what about Kira? What's Kira?"

From the slight frown that appeared on Kato's face, and the pause that followed Jack assumed that was a slightly difficult question to answer, "Kira is…well he's lots of things."

"What do you mean?"

"Well the _body _that's Kira, but he died when he was seven. The _mind _I'm not too sure what that is."

Daniel blinked. Jack frowned, "You do know that doesn't make sense, right?"

"Yeah. Doesn't really make sense to me either, if you want to know about it, ask Kira."

"Which brings us back to you, who are you? What's a human doing hang around with God and his undead side kick?" Jack demanded.

Another frown, another pause as Kato tried to figure out how to answer that one, "I was Kira's friend, in school," he began slowly, "then I died and well, died again and again and then I turned up here. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Hang on a second," Jack really hated how often he was having to make sure he'd just heard right, "How many times did you say you've died?"

"About three times, but the last time was supposed to be final. Dead dead…no coming back."

"Crazy, total lunatic."

Kato thought he'd been very patient with these people till now, they asked questions and he'd answered them. What were they expecting? Nice normal answers from the people who just appeared out of nowhere, idiots. He wasn't going to sit there and repeat himself over and over again; talking about things he wasn't too sure about himself and hurt! No one wants to have a casual chat about his or her death. "Fine," he snapped at Jack, "Don't believe me. Ask Michael. Ask Kira. If they say the same thing will you believe it then?"

"We're not talking to Michael. Did you forget? He set Daniels shoes on fire!"

Kato tutted in frustration, "I'll talk to him. Make him promise not to set anything else on fire; even better, I'll get Kira to persuade him. He listens to Kira."

Jack gave in. He wasn't at all sure that this was a good idea; he didn't trust Kato or Kira's ability to stop Michael setting things on fire. Michael had proved himself the leader and proved himself powerful. What was there to stop him attacking someone? Nothing. They might get his word, but what was that really worth? Promises can get broken, even if you are a wannabe God substitute. He was not at all sure as they escorted Kato back to the cell, back into the observation room.

Michael and Kira didn't look as happy as the last time. Talking in low voices, with intense expressions on their faces, Jack guessed they were not pleased to have woken up and found Kato gone. When the mirror disappeared to reveal glass again, they instantly had both boys full attention. "Go on then, persuade him," and Jack flipped the switch and pushed Kato closer to the microphone.

"Michael, did you really set that guys shoes on fire?"

"He's lucky it wasn't his head. Where did you go? What did they do to you?"

"They wanted to know who we are, why we're here. Stuff like that."

"And what did you say?"

"I don't know why we're here and I tried to explain who we are but they wouldn't believe me. Listen Michael; you need to explain everything to them, you and Kira, they don't believe anything I say! But they won't talk to you unless you promise not to start setting things on fire again."

"I'm not going to promise that! If the idiot's do something that means they deserve to burn they're bloody well gonna burn! Fuck making promises," and he crossed his arms and glared, looking rather like a stroppy four year old it has to be said.

"Michael! We need to talk to them to sort all this stuff out so we can go home, don't forget that we promised to bring SG1 back to help the others; we can't go back on our word. Now promise." Kira snapped, after a moment's amusement at the childishness of the fire angel, power and responsibility certainly hadn't changed him.

"You can't make me do anything!"

"Can't I?" and Michael was disturbed to see a glint in Kira's eye that was his brother through and through. It was sometimes very easy for Michael to forget who it really was living in this body.

"Fine!" with a huff Michael turned to the window, "I promise not to set anything else on fire," a pause, "unless you guys attack me first. Now can we get out of here and sort this crap out?"

New guys is simple this time, they're all from stargate SG1.

More reviews would be great!


	7. Dust Men

**Authors Note:** Universal is a lot like English, that's why SG1 can understand them. Now I hope that makes Jess happy…'cause she's been nagging me about the language for ages. Thank you for proofreading darling!

* * *

Chapter 6

"Do I have to go?" Hunter could not believe that he was reduced to such childish begging, but at the moment it was all he could do. He was well aware that he was nowhere near as powerful as the majority of the people he was now working with. The only people he could really compete against were the other vampires, the strange old Doctor and Light…who was Nidhogg's other favourite plaything and therefore was out of bounds to Hunter. Because Hunter realised this and he valued his life, he was reduced to begging.

Nidhogg, the person (can you call a dragon a person?) he was begging to be excused from the latest kidnapping expedition, smiled, "But I love taking you kidnapping!"

"Please!"

"No. You're coming. You have no choice in the matter," and he smiled smugly. Why did Nidhogg have to have a teenage body? Hunter wondered, it always made it so much more tempting to just slap him!

To be honest, Hunter had expected this refusal, so as a last ditch attempt he sought out Ash. Ash, as always, was in the main room of the complex where they'd had their first meeting making plans and drawing complicated looking diagrams.

"If you're here to ask if I can get you out of going to get the last sacrifice with Nidhogg the answer's no," he said, without looking up and before Hunter had even opened his mouth.

"Why not? You're in charge here!"

That drew a short laugh, "Despite that, I can't afford to loose Nidhogg's support. You will go with him."

Hunter was tempted to stamp his foot and say it wasn't fair, but he still had a certain amount of pride and dignity and instead he stalked out of the room with his head held high. The caves were surprisingly comfortable and surprisingly practical, it was almost like they'd been built to house an evil army. There was the main chamber, ideal for meetings, and off that were several corridors along the whole length of which there were smaller rooms which were currently being used as storage, cells or rooms for those people who were staying in the area rather than going back to their homes. That wasn't actually that many people. The Cabal representative had gone back to take care of his company as had Tohma Seguchi but aside from him, everyone else lived at the base. Hunter was quite surprised there hadn't been more fighting, at the moment everyone was living in relative peace.

Hunter retreated to his room to sulk and await the customary pre-kidnap team meeting. He wondered who else would get dragged on the expedition. Thinking about it, there weren't that many candidates left, everyone who was available had already gone on one of the outings, except Caleb and Treize. That was going to be fun. Hunter prided himself on being very difficult to intimidate, but Caleb intimidated him, he had the most disturbing smile Hunter had ever seen and drank blood out of wine glasses, despite not being a vampire. Treize on the other hand was just annoying. He spent a lot of time talking, but Hunter was relatively certain he never actually said anything important.

He only managed to escape for around ten minutes before Xavier appeared to tell him he was wanted in the main hall. He didn't need to say why. Hunter was tempted to tell him to go back and say he wasn't coming, but decided he'd been behaving like a child far too long already. Xavier was laughing at him as he reluctantly dragged himself along the corridor, damn him, Hunter would hit him but the bastard would simply vanish. Damn them all.

Nidhogg was waiting for him, chatting to Caleb. Judging by the enormous grin on Nidhogg's face and the frown on Caleb's, the others weren't immune to Nidhogg's annoying powers.

"Ahhhh Leechy boy!"

"…what?"

"Your new nickname," Nidhogg replied with a proud grin, "Leechy boy."

"Don't call me that.

"Alright! Do you prefer Huntykins?"

Hunter couldn't decide which was worse and found refuge in silence, sitting down and edging his chair as far away from Nidhogg as possible. Nidhogg's smile never wavered.

"Right, this is our team, the guy we're going after is…"

"Wait, where's Treize, isn't he due a trip?"

Finally Nidhogg's smile wavered, "That man…is the most annoying human being I've ever encountered and I would eat him if I hadn't promised Ash I wouldn't eat any of you until after Sets resurrected."

"You're the creator of evil and you're listening to Ash?"

"Don't be silly! I'm listening to myself and my promise; I'm the only person worth listening to. Dragon's got to have integrity."

"Right…"

Nidhoggs smile had returned with vengeance, "Now we've all finished arguing, we can get on. This ones a challenge people, we're going after…a shinigami."

Caleb nodded with understanding, so Hunter wasn't about to ask what on earth, in heaven or hell, a shinigami was. He didn't want to look stupid.

"For those of us who don't know what that is," a significant look in Hunters direction made Hunter realise that Nidhogg could probably read minds (damn him!), "That mean's he's a god of death. Well, Gods used loosely, guardian would be more appropriate."

"We're going to kidnap and execute a God of death?"

"Trust me it works in practice!" Nidhogg waved his hand dismissively.

"So, where abouts are we gonna find this shinigami?" Caleb chipped in, well aware that any banter between Hunter and Nidhogg was likely to go on far too long.

"Japan. Hisoka Kurosaki is in charge of the Kyūshū district."

"The what district?"

"Lets just call it the K district then," Nidhogg grinned in Hunters direction, "In case it's too much of a mouthful for you Leechy boy."

Hunter prayed silently for strength from absolutely any type of divine being up above. He would ask God, but according to Rosiel, God was on holiday.

* * *

"Tsuzuki, something's coming…I can feel it."1

Tsuzuki raised his eyebrows at Hisoka, wondering what pearls of wisdom his empathic powers would create now. Not that he didn't trust that Hisoka really was feeling that something was coming; he might just be feeling that a bus was coming…or the post…or something.

"What's coming?"

"Something bad."

A bill maybe, Tsuzuki couldn't help thinking and grinned guiltily, "How bad?"

"Very bad," Hisoka turned wide scared eyes to glare reproachfully as Tsuzuki who obviously wasn't taking this seriously enough, "Death."

Wasn't that obvious? They were shinigami after all, currently on earth looking for some more mysteriously dead souls, sitting in a café if you want to be precise. Well, actually they were looking for two people who had very suddenly disappeared off the register of the dead, something which never happened, so the fact that death was coming was a little obvious.

"Death? Death…comes a lot…"

"Not like that! Death…our death, my death, your death."

"We're already dead."

A glare, "I know that! I can't help feeling that death is coming for us, again."

Tsuzuki considered this and how totally impossible it was, "Are you feeling ok Hisoka? I think you need a holiday."

Another glare, "I'm fine."

Tsuzuki thought about the situation some more, he now thought his holiday idea was the best soloution for Hisoka's bad feelings, "Why don't you go for a walk?" he suggested, kindly.

Hisoka's glare had now become a permanent fixture on his face and without another word he stood and left the cafe. He didn't storm out, he was far too dignified for that, but he left the distinct impression that he had stamped his foot and slammed the door very hard.

Hisoka understood that Tsuzuki sometimes failed to understand the seriousness of his feelings and the he was so lazy he sometimes couldn't be bothered to listen and try and understand, but that didn't make it any less annoying. Hisoka new something bad was going to happen, just as he knew that his sense was often a little unpredictable. Some people would say that this knowledge should make him less inclined to get worked up about it every time he got the feeling he was going to die very soon…but that kind of feeling is a little hard to ignore.

He walked slowly down the street thinking hard and trying to identify the true nature of the feeling. It was a sense of impending doom…the kind of feeling you got before a visit to the dentist that you knew was going to be unpleasant…

"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?"

…what? There was a man…in a priest's outfit…standing in front of him, smiling mildly and holding a bible in his general direction. At first, as the man did have a strong accent, Hisoka thought he'd misheard him, but the bible said otherwise.

"Er…"

"You should let Jesus into your life and let him heal all your sins."

Hisoka looked desperately for an escape route, he didn't really have a clue what on earth to say to the crazy Christian trying to convert him. What do you say to them when you know your souls been saved and you're already dead?

They were standing at the edge of the street, the light was failing around them and people were hurrying past not about to stop and offer him any help. With no warning, someone very near by started to giggle uncontrollably in the way only teenage girls and men who are very comfortable with themselves can giggle. Bewildered, Hisoka searched for the sound, barely noticing the look of intense annoyance that was passing over the priest's face.

"Oh Caleb that was brilliant!" and a person appeared from the alleyway they were standing in front of, dragging a second very disgruntled looking man along with him, "You really had the whole 'I'm a crazy preacher run for your life' look. It was amazing!"

"You said you wouldn't interrupt," the priest spoke through gritted teeth.

"Did I?" the person, who on further inspection proved to be a young teenager, barely the same age as Hisoka, "Well I just forgot."

The man being dragged along behind muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Yeah…right…you just forgot…yeah…so likely"

"So, Hisoka! You wouldn't mind coming with us would you?" the boy said, turning to face Hisoka, eyes shifting…changing…so that you didn't need empathic powers to sense the menace he was emitting.

"I…I…" this was his doom and Hisoka knew it, this was what he had sensed, he had one option.

One option that Hunter had anticipated from the moment they'd set eyes on him, small, skittish, the kind that always run. Hisoka hadn't taken three steps before Hunter had grabbed him and dragged him into the alleyway. Nidhogg smiled, clapping his hands together and following, pausing only to beckon Caleb to come along too.

"Now there's no need to struggle like that," Nidhogg said sweetly, watching as Hunter pinned their victim to the wall, "We're not here to hurt you. That wouldn't serve our purposes at all."

"Then…what's this?" Hisoka demanded desperately.

"We haven't hurt you. Leechy boy are you strangling him?" Nidhogg asked with mock severity, "No, we just need you to come with us."

"Why?"

"You're going to help us!"

"Hisoka!" The voice came from the end of the alleyway and made everyone turn round in surprise to see Tsuzuki standing there looking very confused by the scene in front of him.

"Oh dear, I was looking forward to a lovely little chat," Nidhogg sounded genuinely sad as he smiled at his captive and then at the rescue which had come, but far too late. With a sigh, he reached forward and touched Hisokas forehead; he slumped instantly unconscious in Hunters arms. With another sigh he turned to Tsuzuki who was reaching for a spell even as Nidhogg raised a hand, emitting a sort of silvery net which flew to the end of the alleyway and created a wall between them and Tsuzuki.

Then they were gone, down the alleyway and vanishing, by the time the silvery net disintegrated and Tsuzuki could get through there was no sign of any of them. He stood, wrong footed by the sudden and unexpected nature of events. He had no idea why this investigation into the names vanishing of the death register would prompt a kidnapping by the most bizarre group of people he had ever set eyes on, but he was going to find out.

* * *

Michael, Kira and Kato sat on one side of the large table in the briefing room, Sam, Jack, Daniel and Teal'c sat on the other side and General Hammond sat at the head of the table. It was probably almost entirely down to Kira that this meeting was actually taking place, but whether they were going to thank him for it or blame him was yet to be seen. Judging by the disgruntled looks on Jack and Michael's faces…the latter was far more likely.

"Lets start at the beginning," Hammond began reasonably and predictably, "Who are you?"

"I'm the Archangel of Fire, the General of the Heavenly Armies and the Chief of the Powers, I already told you."

"Yes, but you didn't explain what that meant," Daniel took over and gained himself a slight glare from the general, "Kato, implied it makes you God?"

Michael blinked, "God? I'm not God. I'm just doing his job."

"But…why? And who is this God? The Christian God, the Muslim God, we really don't understand."

Michael sighed, a little of his aggressive attitude seeping away, "God is the creator. He balances out the power of the destroyer."

"You mean the devil?"

"No, the destroyer. In the beginning there was neutrality…or nothing as it's more commonly translated. The destroyer and the creator were the guardians of the neutrality; they kept things balanced and equal. Then the creator broke the balance and he was called God. The destroyer fought against him to try and bring back the balance, and he became Satan."

"But you just said that God balances out the power of the destroyer…" Daniel looked very confused but also like Christmas had come early.

"He does," Michael frowned, "Its complicated and it'll take a long time to explain."

"Right," Jack instantly realised that something was being hidden from him, but he didn't think it was out of malice or particularly aimed at hurting them, "So, where do you come into all this."

"God made the angels and every angel has a rank. First comes Adam Kadamon, then come the organic and inorganic angels, then come the powers. I'm the first power. God is gone. Adam Kadamon is lost. The organic and inorganic angels are dead. I'm next in line, I have to take over or heaven will fall into chaos again."

"But you're only a child," Sam, like the men in all things, apart from her maternal instinct which occasionally seeped into her work.

Michael flared up instantly, "Child?? Child?? I'm not a child! I was created not so long after time began, I am not a child."

"Angeles stop aging physically once they come into their full powers," Kira ignored Michaels flare up, "Michael came into his power very early, so he stopped aging early."

"And who are you?" Jack demanded, "How do you fit into all this?"

"I'm a lot of things," a slow smile, "I started off as Michaels twin brother, Lucifel."

"Twins?" he asked, disbelieving again, eyes darting between the two of them and deciding he hadn't been imagining the fact that they looked nothing alike.

"We were created together," Michael growled testily, "That's it."

"To cut a very long story short, Lucifel did wrong, was banished to hell and became Lucifer."

"Lucifer as in the devil?" Sam's turn to be incredulous now.

"No. The devils one of the seven satans, Lucifer was the demon king."

"Right…"

"Lucifer ended up turning into a sword…"

"I won't ask…"

"Then he fell in love with Alexial, that didn't work out quite how he planned and I was dieing on the road and Lucifer came into my body and I became Kira."

"Let's move on," Jack had his eye on Daniel who looked like he was going to start drooling, "So, you're God's substitute and you're a mutated demon king and you're just a weird guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time…why are you here?"

"We need your help to save the world," Michael paused, a look of horror passed over his face, "Fuck me I did not just say that."

Kato sniggered and then sobered quickly as disapproving adult looks rained down on him. He did so hate being one of the youngest people in the room.

"What do you mean? The world doesn't look like it's in a lot of danger…"Jack waved a hand round the room dismissively to indicate situation normal.

"Well of course not," was the scornful response, "It's not this world, it's this world a couple of hundred years in the future."

"So you're from the future as well now? Oh it just gets better…" Jack was starting to miss the paperwork.

"Well…technically…I'm from now as well. I'm up in heaven, but at the moment, yeah I'm from the future."

"Right…so why's the world ending in a few hundred years and what's it got to do with us?"

"You know about the Goa'uld? You're the guys who fight them right?"

A silence fell round the table and Jack had thought that for once they weren't going to have to deal with evil snakes, this one was going to be simple, just some lost aliens, or maybe aliens looking for autographs, that would have been nice. But no. They had to have friggin angels, God and now the Goa'uld.

"Yeah, that's us." Jack answered more confidently than he felt.

"Well, long story short, they were gone, one of them is back and rounding up all the evil people to try and take over the world for themselves."

"Sorry, other evil people? Other Goa'uld or other aliens?" Daniel was of course interested in the specifics of the people.

"No. Just the normal people stirring up trouble. Vampires, demons, sorcerers, dragons…that kind of thing."

Jack blinked, "Are you sure you guys aren't crazy?"

"Sir!" Sam said reproachfully, "If angels are real its reasonable to assume that other mythical creatures may also be real."

"True Major. What I want to know is why you are here? What exactly can we do to help?" General Hammond decided that they needed answers now, never mind the grey areas.

"You can come with us and show us how to kill these things."

"What?" Jack really didn't mean to laugh, "You want to take us into the future to kill some Goa'uld? Don't you have ray guns or something that you can use?"

"Ray guns?" Kira raised his eyebrows, "Just because technology has advanced doesn't mean we can fight these people. We don't know anything about them and knowledge is the key to winning every battle."

"Yeah, I mean, Michaels got the whole fire controlling thing and he still doesn't win every battle."

"Kato, shut up," Michael interrupted testily; "You don't know anything about what battles I win and loose."

"The point is," Kira ignored the other two, "We need your help. There's a prophecy and it's very clear, if the good people don't work together, then there is no hope. Please, just come back with us."

"No. We have no way of knowing if you're even telling us the truth, I mean, you sound like a bunch of lunatics, for all we know you could just want to kidnap us for some kinky fun. We're not going anywhere with you and we're not helping you."

Predictably Michael flared up at that, "I'm not lying! Don't you dare suggest I'm lying," he stood up, prompting the others to do the same, "And it's not like you really have a choice! I can take you with me without even thinking about it, you can't honestly think that someone as powerful as me would need permission from people like you. I promised I'd bring you back to help the crazy people who are going to be leading this fight and I'm going to do that no matter what you say!"

"So you are planning on kidnapping us."

Jack realised that that was probably one of the worst things he could have said in the situation as Michaels fists clenched and they felt the first waves of what was starting to become a familiar heat. Seemingly too angry to speak, the heat was followed by the red glow and Jack found himself wondering if pouring the water in the jug on the table over the furious angel would be at all helpful.

"Michael," Kira said sharply, but it had no effect, Michael had gotten angry one too many times in the last few hours. He really needed to burn something.

The heat was starting to get unbearable, Michael was laughing as the other people in the room backed away from him, "You're going to pay for saying that, for saying I lie. You're going to pay."

Pay they would, there was already a smell of burning as the table started to catch fire and after that it wouldn't be long before the whole room and the whole base would fall victim to the flames.

The only person who hadn't really moved was Kato. He was no stranger to doing stupid things that risked his life to help others and to be honest he was a little tired of being dragged back into life over and over again, this looked like the perfect opportunity to die yet again. Without much more thought, he jumped to his feet and approached Michael, ignoring the searing heat and the manic laughter. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed Michael by the shoulders and shook him hard.

Kato had had burns before. He was clumsy and boiling water seemed oddly attracted to his arms, but those had felt nothing like this. It was literally as if his hands were melting and he was a little scared to look down, he didn't want to see small pools of skin dripping down over Michaels shoulders or something else similarly disgusting. Well an advantage of that was that he didn't think he would have been able to move even if he tried.

Michael was taken by surprise when someone grabbed and started shaking him. He couldn't see too well as he was literally seeing red, a slight disadvantage when it came to targeted burning, but that wasn't really something he was after when he was this angry. It was only a few seconds before he realised that it was Kato, not some faceless member of the bizarre army that was based here, it took another second before he realised that burning Kato to death really wasn't a good idea considering who else was in the room. It was only about 10 seconds from the point Kato grabbed him to the point where Michael shut the flame and the heat away with a bang, but he was well aware that in those 10 seconds Kato would have suffered a lot.

The flames stopped and Kato let Michael go, finally looked at his hands. Well, they hadn't melted they were just…well…bubbling slightly. Blistering really. At least he still had skin. It didn't really hurt that much now. He flexed his fingers, oh, that's how you make it hurt.

"Kato you idiot!" Kira abandoned the universal language they'd all been using so he could tell Kato off more thoroughly in their native Japanese, "Why did you do that?" he grabbed the poor boy by his shoulders and gave him a small shake, "Look at your hands! Look what you've done!"

"Well there's no more fire."

"Michael! You…you…why can't you just control your temper? He's not immortal anymore, he can't heal, he's totally human again…"

Faced with Kira's anger Michael felt about two inches tall, "Raphael, Raphael can heal him."

"Raphael's not here!"

"We'll go back, we'll get these guys, we'll go back and I'll get Raphael to heal him."

Kira spun round and glared at the assembled SG-1 party, "You're coming with us," he said, switching back to the universal, "We need to take Kato back now so he can be healed, you're coming with us."

"We can't help you," Jack protested, trying not to look at the boy's hands which seemed still to be burning.

"Yes you can! If you can't, really can't, we will bring you back, just come with us and talk to the people who know all about it."

Jack looked at General Hammond, Hammond gave a small nod, Jack sighed, "Alright, we'll go with you."

"Good."

"So, how is this going to work?" Daniel asked.

"Hold hands; just make sure you're touching someone who's touching me."

They did so and moments later they vanished from the room, heading for an uncertain future.

* * *

When Quatre had vanished in the same week as Hilde, Duo had been instantly suspicious. The link between them wasn't great, one was a gundam pilot and one was a friend to a gundam pilot…a different one…but it was a link and that was enough to make them all suspicious. Well, Trowa had taken a little bit of persuading but he was understandably mostly concerned about Quatre, so when the decision had been made to go to where Hilde had vanished he had put up a bit of a fight.

Fighting his own desire to rush off and look for Hilde in the place she'd been last, Duo had patiently hung around with the rest of them round where Quatre had vanished, but when it was clear that there were no leads there, he had been the most enthusiastic champion of moving on to where Hilde had vanished. A small town called Sunnydale.

That was there they were right now. They'd only just arrived and Duo was bouncing along the street drinking in their new surroundings. Trowa, Wufei and Heero followed him far more sedately.

"Isn't this great!" he chirped, "Real small town America…typical California…it's just great!" and Duo skipped some more, zig zagging backwards and forwards across the pavement.

The others exchanged glances. None of them could see what was particularly great about this town in comparison to the hundreds of other towns they'd passed through on their way here, this was just Duo being excited about the fact that they'd arrived. They also weren't concerned that despite investigating the disappearances of two close friends he was in amazingly good spirits, that was just Duos way of coping with things and it was also preferable to depressed moping. They had Trowa for that.

Duo slowed down slightly as they came up to a graveyard, "Cemetery," he said thoughtfully, "Graves."

"What, Duo?" Heero asked.

"New graves? Unmarked graves, unidentified bodies."

"You think if Hilde died here they might have buried her in the cemetery?" Wufei clearly didn't think it was a good idea, but Duo was already through the gates and peering at the graves in the darkness which had fallen several hours before and they had no choice but to follow.

They hadn't gone far before the sounds of a fight reached their ears. The familiar dull thuds and grunts that accompany any fist fight floated to them clearly from over a small rise in the land. As one, they drew weapons, took on a loose formation and advanced to investigate the fight.

As always, Heero lead the formation and so he was the first person to see what was happening in the small dip behind the rise. There were three men with oddly disfigured faces, dressed in dark clothes facing off against a small blonde girl. In her hand the girl held what looked like a wooden stake and she was talking to the men, with resignation and amusement tingeing her voice.

"Now come on, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either you come at me one by one like good little vampires and I kill you or you rush me all at once and I still kill you…"

She was clearly going to say more but one of the leading men lunged forward, Heero was about to jump up and come to his rescue when the girl ducked the clumsy attack and the embedded the stake in his chest. Instead of the man screaming and falling to the floor as Heero expected, there was a slight pause and he burst into a cloud of dust.

Heero blinked, looked back and met Wufeis eyes. Wufei looked just as confused as Heero and he therefore concluded that he hadn't just had a bizarre hallucination. He looked back just in time to see a second man go the same way as the first and then rapidly the third as well. Heero didn't put his gun away, they were now faced with an unknown entity that had just reduced three men to dust. They were not going to enter into this lightly…

Duo was scurrying over the hill, his gun gone and an eager grin plastered all over his face, "That was soooooooo cool!"

The girl looked at him, startled but instantly on guard.

"How do you make them go poof like that? You just have to show me!"

"Who are you?"

"I'm Duo Maxwell. I run, I hide, but I never tell a lie! Wufei, Trowa and Heero are hiding back there. Who are you?"

She blinked as the other three reluctantly revealed they're hiding places and joined them, "I'm Buffy. Those guys…they were…they…oh crap."

"A piece of wood, cannot make a person burst into dust," Heero said in his usual monotone when talking to strangers, "What were they?"

"Vampires."

"Vampires exist? Cool!"

"Vampires do not exist, Duo."

"Who are you? Why are you here?" Buffy asked helplessly.

"We're looking for someone," Duo had turned suddenly more serious, "A girl, with blue hair and purple eyes. Hard to miss."

Buffy was about to deny ever having met a person like that, when she thought of the girl in the morgue who'd started this whole thing off, "I think I have seen her."

Well her tone of voice said it all, Duo's face fell a little, but not totally, "Where?"

"She's dead."

"How?"

"She was killed by a vampire."

"Which vampire?" Duo was getting aggressive now, planning exactly what was going to happen to this vampire.

"We don't know. There are a lot of them, its impossible to know which one did what."

"What do you mean it's impossible? Nothings impossible, there has to be something we can use!"

Buffy hesitated, "There was something…"

"What?" Duo demanded, moving closer to her.

"The bite marks were different. Bigger. This was a different type of vampire to the ones we normally see."

"That means we can find it!" Duo spun round to face the other three, "It might have something to do with Quatre vanishing, we have to stay and find this thing."

"Duo, we have no idea if what this person is saying is true!" Wufei protested irritably, "Vampires are a myth, this woman is clearly insane."

"Hey! I'm insane? You're the ones slinking around a graveyard and watching people in that creepy James Bond type way."

"And we did just see her make three men turn into dust," Heero pointed out, "I think it's safe to assume she is telling the truth. The only other explanation is that we are having a mass hallucination."

"I like the "vampires are real explanation" best," Duo added.

"Precisely." Trowa agreed.

"Therefore the best course of action is to do as Duo suggests, stay here and try and find this vampire to see if it knows anything about Quatres disappearance," Heero's sharp eyes turned to Buffy, "And you're going to help us."

Oh dear, Buffy thought to herself, what was Giles going to say?

* * *

1-Ok…this is lame, but it's a lord of the rings reference and gave me 10 minutes of giggles in the study room…work with me.

New guys:

Tsuzuki and Hisoka- Descendents of Darkness

Reviews would be lovely!


	8. Death

**Authors Note: **I need to say thanks to Jess, again, this time for writing this spell! I bullied her into it. Thank you darling!

* * *

Chapter 7

When Quatre had woken up to find himself in a small stone cell with a door so thick he couldn't hear anything through it, he had been understandably annoyed. When one goes from enjoying peace and quiet at a nice country home to a cell, it's a little bit disappointing. For the first few hours he'd consoled himself with the fact that soon, whoever had taken him would come and reveal why they'd kidnapped him, then, he'd at least have something to do. Unfortunately for him, this did not happen and hours turned into days and the whole time he was left severely alone in his little cell.

It must have been almost a week now and he hadn't seen or heard anyone. The oddest thing about that was that food and drink were still delivered to him. He'd fall asleep on the floor (there was no furniture) and when he woke up a tray of food had appeared. He just couldn't work out how it was being done. He would have heard if the door was being opened and therefore woken up, but there was never any noise that indicated that the door had opened. In fact there weren't any noises apart from the ones he made himself. It was starting to get boring. Yes, boring. The stage of worrying that he'd be stuck like this for the rest of his life had already passed. Quatre stared at the door, not even willing it to open anymore because he just knew it wasn't going to.

The door opened.

Quatre sat up straighter as the door opened very slowly and a figure appeared standing in the doorway. It was a man, smiling. The smile would have been friendly in any other situation; Quatre highly doubted this man was a rescuer, so he stood up warily.

"Hello," the man said, smile widening, "You have to come with me."

"Where to?"

"Another room."

"What's going to happen when we get there?"

"Nothing."

"What if I refuse to go?"

"That would be very stupid; I'll just make you go."

"Why am I here?"

"Don't ask me…I'm just the messenger."

Quatre watched him carefully. He hadn't sensed that he was lying about any of what he'd just said, he also couldn't sense any sort of malice or anything. Going with him was probably the only way he was going to find out what was going on; escape was out of the question without more information, so Quatre walked out of the cell.

The cell led into a long corridor which was totally empty. That surprised Quatre; he would have expected at least one more guard. "That way." The man pointed to the left, "Walk, I'll follow."

Both intimidated and insulted by the lack of security, Quatre did as he was told. They passed more doors; there were obviously more cells and probably more prisoners along here. He listened hard, but couldn't hear anything coming from any of the rooms. With this much space, he couldn't be the only person being held here.

"Stop." Quatre froze, even though the order from behind had been casual and lazy, "You're going in here."

The man came forward and touched a spot on the door they'd halted in front of, it slid open…

"Wait, who are you? Why am I here?"

The man sighed and pushed him through the door, "I told you, I'm just the messenger."

* * *

Raphael was annoyed and worried. Michael did not often disappear without telling people where he was going. Michael was incapable of going anywhere quietly enough to totally avoid being noticed, but that was exactly what he'd done. One moment, he'd been wandering around heaven and the next no one had been able to find him and there was absolutely no trace of him.

At first, Raphael had been supremely annoyed at this. After all, Michael was supposed to be looking after heaven and that's a responsibility you don't just dump without finding someone to step in. Which might be exactly why he had just vanished, he knew very well that Raphael wouldn't let things fall apart. But then again, Michael would normally just ask him to take care of things while he was slacking off. So gradually, the annoyance had turned to worry, especially when an extensive search had revealed that Michael was definitely no longer in heaven.

So now, Raphael was standing in Michael's office, which was the last place he'd been seen, and trying to work out where he'd gone. The first thing he noted, was that Michaels sword was still in it's place, leaning against the wall where Michael always left it, so he either left in a hurry or he didn't know he was going to leave. This second option matched well with distinct feeling of magic in the air.

Angels have highly developed senses. They can see, hear, smell and taste things much better than any other being in the world and things which to others have no smell, or taste, or sound to them smell as strongly as petrol or taste as strong as garlic. Spells, to an angel, have a very distinct smell. The moment Raphael had stepped into the room he'd smelled the acidic, sour smell of a summoning spell, with the particular twist that hold him the person in the room had been summoned…not done the summoning.

Well that just didn't make any sense. No one would summon Michael. For one thing it would require an exceptionally powerful witch. Secondly, the spell to summon Michael was known by only very few people and none of those would use it lightly. Thirdly, Michael had never been summoned before. Ever. No high ranking angel was summoned every five minutes like some common demon and certainly not from outside heaven, which is what this smell told Raphael had happened.

Following the smell was easy enough. Raphael had often scorned simple magic, but he knew enough of it to reverse the spell and send him to the place from which Michael had been summoned. The only problem with that was that it would leave heaven in the hands of Uriel…who wasn't the most suitable leader of heaven…and Raphael wasn't particularly inclined to just jump into a portal and hope for the best. He sighed, but he was far too worried and intrigued by the singular situation to just ignore it all and wait for Michael to come back.

Sighing again, Raphael prepared to recast the spell and find out what had happened to Michael. If it wasn't worth all this time and effort…Raphael was going to kill him.

Raphael had been expecting to turn up in some area of heaven, or maybe hell, he had not expected to turn up in the middle of the living room of a house that was clearly on earth in front of a startled looking teenage girl.

"Hello," he said, smiling as he realised the girl was quite pretty, "I'm looking for Michael."

"Giles! Willow! Spike! Xander! A man just appeared in the lounge!" the girl called, sounding slightly panicked.

A rush of footsteps followed and the four named people appeared through both the doors leading into the room. Raphael crossed his arms casually and surveyed them, assessing who was likely to be the leader and fixed on the distinguished looking man who was also the oldest member of the party.

"I'm looking for Michael," he said, "might have turned up a couple of days ago. Short, red hair, shouts and swears a lot. Just wondering if you'd see him."

They had of course seen him. It was the second day since Michael's departure, Buffy was out patrolling and they were waiting. Now, there was a strange man standing in their living room. Tall, handsome, arrogant looking, asking after Michael. Giles felt this wasn't good.

"We have seen him. He was here," he answered cautiously, "Who are you?"

"I'm Raphael," the name rang a bell with Giles, "You summoned him?"

"Yes," Giles replied distractedly, "Raphael…in myth…Raphael is the heavenly doctor…are you?"

"I'm the angel of wind and medicine, yes."

"Oh god. Not another bloody angel," Spike muttered, earning him a glare from Giles, "What? They're bloody annoying!"

"Yes, thank you Spike."

Raphael raised his eyebrows and looked at Spike, "You're dead."

"I'm not!"

"You are. You smell dead, you look dead…vampire?"

"Yeah," Spike shuffled a little uneasily, "What's it to you?"

"Oh nothing, just explains why you might have worked out how to summon Michael. Which of you did it by the way?"

"Erm…me." Willow flinched when Raphael's piercing eyes instantly settled on her.

"Well done," he said with respect, "May I ask why?"

"To save the world," said a bored voice from the hallway, "Why else?"

* * *

The moment the door closed behind him Quatre realised he wasn't alone in this cell. It was much bigger and more brightly lit so he could see the other occupant of the cell, as well as hear her. She was crying, cuddled up in a corner, sobbing, and staring at Quatre with obvious fear. Quatre felt instantly sorry for her. She was young, very pretty and fragile looking.

He walked over to her and crouched down in front of her, "Hello. I'm Quatre, what's your name?"

She stared at him, swallowing her sobs valiantly, "Are you a prisoner too?"

"Yes. I was in a cell just along the corridor. What's your name?"

"Illiana. Do you know why we're here? Do you know what's going on?" she asked eagerly, leaning forwards, tears almost forgotten.

"No. I've got no idea. I was just working in my garden, and then they took me and brought me here."

"I was in my room. The man climbed in through the window."

Quatre looked at her. He hadn't sensed any deception from her, she wasn't one of them, she was genuinely another prisoner, but why? He couldn't think of a link between himself and this delicate little blonde girl. They weren't really the perfectly matched set of hostages. Before he could question her further, the door opened and another person walked in. An older woman, blonde too but without the air of delicacy. He got to his feet and stared at her. She stared back clearly bewildered.

"Who are you?" She demanded, "Are you with them?"

"With who?"

"The people who are keeping us here."

"No. We're not. I'm Quatre and this is Iliana. Who are you?"

She hesitated, clearly not sure if she should trust them, "Elena. Do you know why we're here?"

Quatre shook his head, "I was hoping you could help us out with that."

She frowned, "I can't. I have no idea what's going on. Have you seen anyone else?"

"No. Just you, her, the man outside and the people who brought us here."

"Did you recognise any of them?"

"No," Quatre sighed, "None of them."

An awkward silence fell. Quatre was thinking hard about their situation. Illiana was too scared to break the silence and Elena was watching them both warily still not totally sure they were trust worthy.

The door opened again. It appeared that they were putting all their captives in one room. All their eggs in one basket. The fact that something as lame as that could make Quatre giggle was a clear indication of how starved of company he was.

Another girl, this one very different from the first two, tall, dark, and obviously pissed off, "You bastard Xavier! This just isn't funny! You can't lock me up…again!" She yelled as the door closed. She kicked it. Turned to glare at them, "So, what are you lot?"

"I'm Quatre, that's Illiana and that's Elena."

"Oh I don't mean names! What are you?"

Quatre was confused, but the other two seemed to understand the question much better.

"I'm a witch," Illiana said.

"I'm human."

She turned and looked at Quatre, waiting for his answer, "Erm…I didn't know you could be anything but human…but I'm an empath."

"What are you?" Elena asked, slightly annoyed that this young girl was jumping in and interrogating them.

"I'm a witch too."

"And what's your name?" Quatre asked as politely as possible.

"Savannah."

"When you say witch," Quatre asked carefully, "what exactly do you mean?"

"A witch. Someone who can do spells," Savannah tossed her hair, "Are you stupid or something?"

"You knew that man didn't you? You called him Xavier." Quatre decided to ignore her rudeness in favour of finding out as much as possible.

"Yes. He's a half demon."

"A what?" this was Elena, frowning, she'd heard of witches before but she had no idea what a half demon was.

"A half demon. Someone with a human mum and a demon dad, where have you people been living?"

"So, if you know him, you know what we're doing here?" Quatre was trying to keep the conversation relevant.

"No. I don't. Xavier's not the type of person to plan this stuff; he just works for whoever will pay him the most."

And into this discussion the door opened for what would prove to be the final time. Quatre was almost glad to see that this person was male. Small, blonde and sickly looking, he stared at them with obvious fear.

"Hello!" Savannah said, brightly, "Who and what are you?"

"I'm Hisoka."

"And what are you?"

He frowned slightly, then sighed, "Shinigami," then seeing their blank faces, "I'm a guardian of death."

"That's nice," Savannah wrinkled her nose, "I'm Savannah, that's Elena, Illiana and Quatre. We're all hostages and none of us know what's going on. It's nice to meet you."

* * *

Michael hadn't been that surprised to see Raphael when they'd reappeared in the present day. He knew that his disappearance would cause a stir up in heaven, after all, he was kind of God, and he had also known that the first person to come running looking for him would be Raphael. Convenient really, considering that Kira was practically carrying Kato.

"Save the world?" he asked, raising an eyebrow when he caught sight of SG-1 standing behind them in the corridor looking confused.

"Yes," Michael made a valiant effort to keep a straight face. He wasn't know for his interest in saving anything but himself, "Right now though, could you give us a hand saving some hands?" and he waved in Kato's general direction, who, right on que, fainted.

Raphael normally didn't just heal anyone who crossed his path, he was very protective of his powers and you really had to earn his service. However, Michael had a strange way of just making him do things, besides which he knew Kato and it's always much harder to say no to people you know. So Kato was laid down on the sofa, an ominous semi-circle formed around them and Raphael examined his hands. He recognised Michaels work straight away and tutted. It was a good thing he'd decided to come look for him, there weren't many people who could fix burns given by Michael.

It took quite a lot of energy, but it was relatively easy, especially in such a small area. He put out his hands to cover Kato's, letting them hover just above the burnt and blistered skin. Taking a deep breath he let his power flow down through himself and across the small gap, into Kato.

To the outside observers it didn't look like anything was happening. It was just Raphael, kneeling next to Kato, holding his hands. There was no glowing light, no sound, just what looked like hand holding. Then Raphael stood up, removed his hands and underneath them Kato's hands were just as they had been before their encounter with Michael.

"He won't wake up for a while, just leave him there, he'll be fine," he turned to Michael, "I think we all have quite a bit of explaining to do…"

The front door opened and Buffy entered followed by a group of young men, "Hey Giles I just found…" she trailed off and stared at all the people in the room, "What's going on?"

"A lot of explaining," Raphael repeated.

* * *

Nidhogg was so bored. Nidhogg was always bored. When you're 14 billion mentally and 14 physically nothing much is interesting anymore. Little things come along and amuse you for a while but then you get bored again and you just want to sleep. Nidhogg had slept through the past ten thousand years quite happily, now he was awake and he wanted to be entertained. That was why when he'd felt the pathetic attempts at pulling a soul out of death, he'd decided to go and investigate. He'd found Ash, heard the plan and joined in. It had been amusing at first, but now, planning the end of the world was starting to get old.

He did like it here though. There were fun people to play with, like Hunter and Light, and there was a good chance he'd get to eat some people soon, even though he was starting to get very fond of chocolate. They hadn't had chocolate the last time he'd been on earth. They hadn't had pizza either, or chips.

"You'll get fat," Hunter had warned him after seeing him munching his way through five pizzas.

"No I won't," had been his smug reply, "I control what I look like. I only get fat if I want to get fat."

Right now, Nidhogg had found a packet of jelly babies and was watching the preparations for the sacrifices. At first, he'd thought jelly babies were human babies turned into jelly, and he'd been mildly disappointed to discover that jelly was made out of animals, but he wasn't complaining, they tasted good. The spell they were using was one he'd suggested, a nice simple one, requiring very little special equipment and preparation. In all honesty, all you really needed to do was stab the victims while repeating the spell but humans were generally very suspicious of things which weren't overly complicated…so Nidhogg had improvised.

He watched with satisfaction as various minions drew out a large circle surrounded with complex symbols using only the blood from frogs while others were busy making armbands out of goat hairs. These armbands were to be worn by those performing the ceremony along with robes and hoods. All of this, along with a ceremonial sword, had made everyone far more comfortable with the situation. Preparations were almost over now and Ash was starting to get a little nervous. Nidhogg watched him approach.

"And you're absolutely sure we don't have to do this at a special time or anything?" he demanded.

"Absolutely sure."

"Right. So when the circles finished we can start, nothing else necessary?" he persisted.

"Nothing else," Nidhogg confirmed, munching on his last jelly baby sadly.

"Right," Ash repeated, turning to look at the workers, "And it'll be you, me, Light, Rosiel and Hunter performing the actual sacrifice?"

"Yep," Nidhogg folded the packet carefully and slipped it into his pocket to be added to his collection of food packaging later on. He liked to collect things. Over the years, his biggest collection had been of arrow heads, but he thought this a suitable replacement as arrows didn't appear to be around anymore.

"Right. Right." He wandered away looking distracted.

Nidhogg, feeling slightly bored again, decided to go and pay their captives a visit. He hadn't seen them since the kidnaps and was curious to see how they were getting on. He didn't think they'd be too pleased to see him. He'd been along on most of the kidnaps; he was sure the ones whose kidnap he had been involved in would remember him and not be too pleased to see him popping into their cell. He didn't mind, they wouldn't be able to touch him so all their anger would be in vain.

He reached the cell; Xavier was leaning against the wall looking about as bored as Nidhogg felt. He brightened visibly when he saw Nidhogg "Is it time?"

"Not yet. I just want to talk to them."

Xavier drooped a little and sighed, "Alright."

Nidhogg chuckled, opened the door a little way and slid inside.

Quatre tensed the minute the door started to open, that tension eased slightly when the person entering the room turned out to be a boy, a boy who looked younger than any of them. He thought he was relatively harmless looking, so he was very surprised when the girl called Savannah instantly took up a defensive stance and the boy Hisoka jumped to his feet turning white.

"You!" Savannah exclaimed, "You're one of the men who took me."

The boy smiled, "So glad you remember."

"What are you? You stopped all my spells, how did you do that?"

The boys smile widened, "I'm a dragon."

"They put all the dragons to sleep! The witches did!" Illiana now looked more terrified than Hisoka.

"Oh, well, I'm not that kind of dragon. I'm special."

"Why are we here?" Quatre decided to get to the matter at hand and felt distinctly uncomfortable when the boy's sharp eyes switched to him, staring at him…or through him if you want a cliché.

"Do you want the honest answer?"

"Of course."

"You're here to die. Why else?"

* * *

The table in the Summers living room was barely big enough to accommodate everyone who needed to be there. It had been quite a task to fine enough chairs for everyone. Around the table they were in their groups, Buffy and Co, the Gundam Wing boys, SG-1 and Kira, Michael and Raphael (Kato was still asleep on the sofa) there were 18 people in total and no one knew the whole story. Giles had just finished explaining to the SG-1 crew why they'd been called. They'd listened quietly, but now they had questions.

"Right, so, as well as Angels being real…so are vampires, werewolves, witches and demons?" Jack asked.

"Yep. All real." Xander was enjoying not being seen as the stupidest person at the table.

"Right. And these things, they like trying to kill everyone and destroy the world?"

"Yep."

"Right. And we're a couple of hundred years in the future?"

"Yep."

Jack nodded slowly, "Ok then."

"It would appear, O'Neil, that this is just another mission we must complete," Teal'c absorbed.

"Er…could you; explain to us, what exactly you do and what the Goa'uld actually are?" Giles was hoping that they would get through all the little strands of the story quickly and efficiently and could just get on with saving the world. The thing they did best.

Jack nodded to Daniel and he took up their story, "In 1928 an archaeological dig in Giza uncovered something very interesting. They found a stargate. A stargate is a device that has been used for millennia to travel between all the planets in the universe. It was brought to Earth by the Goa'uld in the time of the pharaohs in Egypt. The Egyptian Gods were Goa'uld and they enslaved the Earth, we managed to overthrow them and history basically forgot about it. Anyway, in 1994 the stargate was reopened and Stargate Command was born. Since then, we've been fighting to stop the world from being taken over by the Goa'uld."

"And the Goa'uld are?"

"The Goa'uld are parasites," Carter took over the explanation, "They're snakes which latch onto the spinal column and take over the host body. It's very difficult to remove them without the host dying and their only aim is to enslave and to dominate all other races."

"Sound like my kind of people."

"Spike! Please!" Giles snapped.

"Sorry."

"So, this is just one Goa'uld, I mean, they can't do too much damage?" Buffy asked, hopefully.

"Depends which Goa'uld. Some of them are extremely powerful with huge armies and weapons we can hardly imagine, they have power across the universe…"Sam would have carried on but Jack interrupted.

"Basically, the Goa'uld are bad news…bad news…no matter which one it is."

"This all makes perfect sense," Raphael chipped in in a bored voice, "But what the hell are those guys doing here?" he pointed to the Gundam wing boys who had sat listening to everything in mild confusion.

"Erm…well, I found them in the cemetery."

"Buffy!" Xander wagged a finger at her, "What have we told you about bringing strange men back from the cemetery."

"Xander," she rolled her eyes, "That girl, vampire kill, started this whole thing off. She was their friend. One of their friends gone missing too, they think it might have something to do with all this."

"Hilde," Duo said, "Her name was Hilde. We're here to make sure whoever killed her gets what's coming to them. And he's Quatre, Quatre Raberba Winner, we need to find him."

"And who are you?" Giles asked

"I'm Duo, that's Heero, that's Trowa and that's Wufei."

"I'm sorry, but I really don't think that, civilians, such as you should be here considering the grave nature of things to come," Giles said pompously.

Duo laughed and exchanged amused glances with the other three, "We're not civilians. You're more civilian than us."

"What do you mean?"

"We're Gundam Pilots. We're so not civilian."

The entire assembled company stared at them at this pronouncement. Half of them stared in awe; they had some of the world's most famous soldiers sitting at their dining room table. The other half were looking at them in confusion, they had no idea what a Gundam was and why a pilot of a Gundam would instantly be seen as not being a civilian.

"Question," Jack stuck his hand up, "What's a Gundam?"

"A Gundam is the most advanced mobile suit ever created," Heero looked at the SG-1 team, wondering just how much they would know and how much he needed to explain, "A mobile suit is basically a giant robot. A pilot sits in the main body of the suite. Mobile suits are the primary weapons in battle. The Gundam's were created to be the best Mobile suits and were to be used to end the war between earth and the colonies."

"Colonies? So you do know alien planets." Daniel said, confused.

"No," Heero shook his head slightly, "The colonies. They're space colonies which orbit the earth. Their occupants are entirely human."

"Unless they're vampires, demons or werewolves," Spike put in, "L2's a big vampire colony."

"Well I think it's obvious that we all have a common goal," Raphael spoke up lazily, looking round the table, "We all want to save the world. I think we should all work towards our common goal. Especially seeing as your little prophecy is so keen on co-operation."

* * *

Here to die, that was what the dragon had said and that was what now appeared to be becoming reality. Figures, wearing hoods and masks, had arrived not long after the dragon's departure. Fighting had been out of the question, Quatre had seen that right away, there were too many of them and no one in their group of captives was armed or particularly experienced when it came to war. They had had their hands tied and were now being marched in silence down the long stone corridor.

It was total silence. Illiana hadn't been able to stop crying since the dragon's revelation, Elena had shed some tears too, but both had sobered as they marched and there were no sounds anywhere but their feet on the stone. It was a long way, through half dark empty tunnels, cold but without the associated sense of damp. They marched along and into a vast chamber. There were people here. More people, in the same costumes as those who marched alongside. There were candles and on the floor a red circle surrounded by symbols. Quatre did not want to think of what exactly the circle had been drawn with. There was only one figure that did not hide its face and body. The dragon. Standing by the entrance to the chamber, leaning against the wall, expressionless, almost careless.

Quatre almost staggered under the waves of absolute evil that radiated from the diminutive figure. Absolute evil, but not malevolent evil, this was an old evil and in some ways a pure evil. What this creature did it did not do out of malevolence and hate, what this creature did was its nature pure and simple and you can't argue with nature.

Nidhogg watched the prisoners march past. They were scared. They were pale. The girls showed signs of tears. Nidhogg had never understood the fear of death. Death wasn't the end. There were hells and heavens and blank stretches of nothingness, far more of these than there were of supposedly living planets. Why fear the thing that was just the next step into the actuality of life? Existence was not going to come to an end anytime soon. Not so long as Nidhogg was still alive and Nidhogg was still young.

The sacrifices were forced into the centre of the circle of blood where they stood, staring around, scared. Nidhogg took his place in the circle. To maintain the atmosphere, he didn't speak, with a nod of his head he released a small proportion of his power, it entered the sacrifices and forced them to walk steadily to the edges of the circle were the five sacrificers stood. He now faced the young man who had been their spokesman, paler than the rest, but his face showed resolve, Nidhogg respected that.

Almost as one the sacraficers slid the small ritual blades from their robes and they began their chant.

"_Αχ μεγάλη και φοβερή __δράκοντα __Λόρδος της οποίας η παρουσία λουφές το Αίμα του Μαν, Θα ικετεύω εσείς O ' αμαρτία του ζηλεύω, O' Δυνατό σατανά, O 'Μεγάλη Λεβιάθαν να εγκαταλείψει για να σας χρεώσει την Goa'uld Ορίστε, ο Θεός της ερήμου. Σε αντάλλαγμα να θυσιάσουμε αυτά τα καθαρόαιμα αλλά και ισχυρών όντων ψυχές Ποιος είστε ελεύθεροι να παιχνιδιών με όπως θέλετε, να μεταλλαχθούν και στρίβοντας όπως νομίζετε."_

Once, twice, three times they repeated the lyrical phrases, joined by all the surrounding minions to create a truly formidable sound. On the fifth repetition, those with knives stepped forward and plunged the blades into the victim's chest at the point where the heart is; then, simultaneously they pulled them out again and slashed the victim's throat, finally allowing them to fall to the floor.

As with most spells, there was a slight delay before it took effect in which there was a deathly silence as those left alive looked around expectantly. Nidhogg knew what would happen next. It was sudden and like an explosion. A white light filled the room, but not a pure white, a harsh white, the white of bones, of fire. It left as suddenly as it came and the assembled company was left staring at the centre of the circle. In the midst of the blood and the death there had been a birth. A man stood there, arms out stretched and face turned upwards.

A man. A man with a powerful figure, tall, well muscled and dressed in a type of leather which did not allow it to go unnoticed. His dark hair was short and curled; his skin was also dark and luxurious apart from the left arm which was twisted with gold. This was Set, a Goa'uld in his prime, robbed of the glory that was almost guaranteed him by some humans he had foolishly underestimated. This was Set, born afresh with this knowledge in a body now all his own and ready not to make the same mistake again.

Without dropping his arms he began to laugh, head tipped back and laughing as though he would never stop. He dropped his arm after what seemed an eternity and looked around him. His eyes fell quickly on the sacrificer who had removed his mask and robe in eager anticipation of the recognition that came now.

"You did it," Set said, simply, "Ash; you have achieved what I knew you would."

"I would not have stopped until it had been achieved, my Lord."

Set laughed again, glorifying in the title he hadn't heard spoken aloud in far far too long. He walked to Ash with his arms outstretched and held him close, something he also hadn't done in far far too long a time. The reunion would probably have lasted longer and been more tender, but there were more important things for Set to occupy himself with.

Releasing Ash, but letting him stand close, Set addressed the army, his army, which was assembled before him.

"You are the only reason why I have managed to break out of hell and your existence is the very reason why I have done it! You are the most powerful, the most skilled of all the beings on this earth. You eclipse the humans in ways they can't even imagine and yet you are not in control. We are not the ones who lead the people and the planet along the right path. The path of servitude and the path which leads to the acquisition of wealth and more and more power.

Earth, humanity, they have stood in the way of our glorious domination far too long and now, as we work together, we will change that. We will be the ones in control. We will!"

Nidhogg smiled. He sensed that Set had always been a good motivational speaker and he sensed, judging by the faces of those around him, that he had just secured himself an army that would happily follow him. In fact, he thought they would probably die for him in his pursuit of the destruction of humanity.

* * *

-this isn't just me being a bit weird. In some branches of Egyptian mythology Set and Ash were lovers.

This is for those people who don't speak Greek, a translation of the spell. Not that I speak Greek…at all…but translators are my friend-

Oh great and terrible Dragon Lord

Whose very presence curdles the Blood of Man,

We beseech thee O' Sin of Envy, O' Powerful Satan, O' Great Leviathan

To relinquish to us your charge the Goa'uld Set, God of the Dessert.

In return we sacrifice these pure yet powerful beings

Whose souls you are free to toy with as you wish,

To twist and mutate as you see fit.

Leviathan is the Satan of envy in the Angel Sanctuary books.

New guys:

Raphael-Angel Sanctuary

Set-Stargate


	9. A light snack before dinner

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **Thanks to Mo! For being amazingly helpful! Even though, he didn't do anything and just bullied me into writing this! Ok, on to serious notes. Geography is not my strong point. I have no idea if there is any possibility of there being woods on the outskirts of L.A, if there isn't, I'm just going to say that because this is in the future, these woods do exist. Ok? Secondly, I apologise for killing off quite a few people in this chapter, but they were annoying me so they had to go! It's vital to the plot I assure you.

Oh and I apologise for any overly flowery language, I was alternating between writing this and reading Frankenstein. I tend to start writing in the style of what I'm reading, so sorry! But I hope you enjoy it anyway. Oh...and sorry for not updating for like 6 weeks, it was summer and I was away and...sorry!

* * *

Chapter 8

Delos had no idea when the responsibility for his great-grandfathers wrong doing had fallen on his shoulders, but it had. Presumably it had something to do with Hunter turning up alive long after he was supposed to be dead. He had even less idea why the responsibility had also fallen on Ash and Quinn. Well, Quinn made at least a little sense considering that Hunter was the one who had made him a vampire, but Ash? Well, he thought Ash was probably just along for the ride. When they'd heard that Hunter was causing minor havoc in California and needed sorting out, Ash had probably started drooling at the prospect of action.

It had all come totally out of the blue; he'd been summoned to a meeting of the council and had been informed, in disapproving tones, that they had received intelligence that his Grandfather had committed several murders, some in public and in daylight, and that it could not be allowed to continue. Delos had instantly been tempted to ask what that had to do with him, but he had wisely kept quiet and listened with growing annoyance to their proposal that he and some carefully chosen companions travel to California, find Hunter and bring him to justice.

Delos hadn't really felt up to pointing out that he'd failed to kill Hunter once before and that it was unlikely that he would succeed on his second attempt. He'd learnt that Circle Daybreak almost considered risking your life for the cause a duty and wouldn't have taken to the idea that it would probably be easier and safer to stay away. His doubt had probably shown on his face because it was at that point that Ash had volunteered to go along, with a very arrogant smirk. Quinn had been chosen by the council, for some reason, Delos got the feeling he was being sent to make sure the job got done properly.

So that was why Delos Redfern, Ash Redfern and John Quinn were standing looking at the sign which announced their entrance to Sunnydale…and none of them were feeling particularly sunny. Well, that was to be expected, it was the middle of the night, but still.

"Where do you think he's going to be hiding?" Ash asked idly.

"I don't know, you both know him better than me."

Both Ash and Quinn acknowledged the statement with a nod and stared out across the town.

"I think we should look around. Get our bearings before we start looking for anyone."

Typically, as they had discovered in the course of the journey, the sensible suggestions always came from Quinn and they set off into the town. This was going to take a while. They'd work out the lay out of the area, and then find a place to stay before beginning a systematic search of the town. Finding Hunter was the first step and only the beginning. The hardest part was going to be the actual dealing with him part. The idea was that they would bring him back to Circle Daybreak for judgement and punishment, but they all knew it was probably going to become an "either we kill him or he kills us" situation. There was no way Hunter was ever going to co-operate. Ever.

The town was pretty standard. There were rows and rows of equally sized houses and a small functional town centre. Nothing special about it, and not really the kind of place that Hunter normally decided to hang around in. It was California damn it, Hunter objected to the entire state. Far too cheerful and sunny. They wandered the streets making note of important landmarks, orientating themselves in case they ever found themselves trying to navigate the area at speed with no time for wrong turns. They were also looking for any evidence of vampire activity. It's surprising how easy it is to identify if a vampire has been around recently if you know what you're looking for. This town, incidentally, looked like it was home to an extraordinary amount of vampires…which was surprising really. Delos hadn't thought large vampire populations existed in the "real world".

The graveyard seemed to be one of Sunnydale's most prominent features and was therefore their next place to explore once they'd seen everything the actual town had to offer. "Why are we bothering?" Ash had asked grumpily, "Graveyards really aren't Hunters style. Everyone in them is already dead." Delos and Quinn had over ruled him and they entered the graveyard while doing their best to ignore his impression of a petulant child.

To be fair, the graveyard really didn't look very promising. In fact, it looked rather dead if you'll forgive the pun. There was absolutely no one around, though one could confidently have expected that considering it was a graveyard in a small town in the middle of the night. Admittedly it was often common to find various youngsters partaking in some under age drinking in places like this, but it wasn't a requirement so no one was particularly surprised when it appeared there was absolutely nothing worth investigating here.

"I told you so," Ash announced triumphantly once they'd made one thorough circuit of the area, "There's no way Hunter would hang out somewhere like this. In fact, there's no reason why anyone would be spending any time here at all and that counts for the living _and_ the undead so why…"

He trailed off abruptly and stopped walking, it was sudden enough to distract Delos and Quinn from the exasperated glances they'd been trading and to make them follow Ash's eyes to the sight which had caused such a sudden stop. For once, what they saw was enough to bring all of them to a silent stand still. You see, a hand was sticking out of one of the graves and it was moving.

"Do they still bury people alive in this part of the world?" Delos asked cautiously. He knew it wasn't an unheard of punishment in the human world and he thought this could be an example of it. No one really had much time to answer as the hand was followed by an arm and another hand which grew into an arm after which the rest of the body followed at speed. That this creature wasn't entirely human was instantly clear due to the deformed and wrinkled nature of its face, but exactly what it was none of them could tell.

The creature fixed its eyes on them and almost seemed to lick its lips in anticipation. Being looked at with quite that much hunger was an entirely new experience to Delos and Ash, but Quinn had at least some experience of it. He suddenly realised exactly what the twisted creature that was rapidly advancing on them might be.

"I think," he said calmly, just before the thing reached them, "That that might be a sort of vampire."

Yet again there was no time to answer; the possible vampire was reaching for Ash. It obviously thought it stood at least some chance of winning the fight, it obviously thought it was dealing with humans, but it wasn't and it had no chance. Delos and Quinn watched calmly as Ash grabbed the creature's head on its first lunge, twisted, pulled and the head came away in his hands. There was no blood, no gore, the body and head simultaneously exploded into dust and then even the dust was gone.

"A vampire? Vampires don't look like that." Ash continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

"No vampire we've ever encountered," Quinn corrected, "But that thing clearly came back from the dead and its teeth were clearly longer and pointier than when it died and it clearly thought you were going to be its first snack."

"I've heard of things like these," Delos added, "Old stories, mostly designed to scare, about the vampires that were more like animals than people. Like shape shifters, but even lower."

"God damn it!" a clearly exasperated voice and a small blonde girl came striding over the small hill the line of graves they were standing at was nestled behind, she was staring at the grave in frustration and apparently hadn't noticed them. That didn't last long, she caught sight of them and it brought her up short a few feet away where she stood, blushing a little, "Erm…you haven't seen anyone, a little bit unusual around this grave have you?"

"Excuse me?" Quinn instantly wandered why she didn't consider them unusual.

"I had an appointment…with someone…they were meant to meet me here. In that grave. You didn't see anyone climb out of it did you?"

"As a matter of fact," Ash answered with some amusement, "We did. Friend of yours?"

"No! No. Definitely not a friend. He was a…a…ummm…a business associate!"

"Well I'm sorry to say your business associate wasn't very friendly. Seemed to want to drink our blood. Then we accidentally made him burst into a cloud of dust. Hope you don't mind," Ash smiled throughout the explanation.

"Oh. Well. I'll be…er going then!" She turned to go, but didn't get very far.

"Just wondering," Ash continued, "Why a young girl like you would have a vampire as a business associate?"

The girl froze and turned back to face them, her expression now far more wary than before, "You knew it was a vampire?"

"We worked it out," Delos couldn't help smirking slightly.

"We have some expertise in the area," Quinn added.

"Vampire slayers?" the girl asked, not quite letting her guard down.

"Not exactly," Quinn relented, "We happen to share some characteristics with…that creature."

"Characteristics?"

"Yeah. Pointy teeth, undead, vampire…that kind of thing."

Though Quinn had expected some kind of negative reaction to this statement, he had not expected the girl to pull a wooden stake from somewhere and ready herself to attack them, "Well, miss one vampire and get three others instead…works for me."

"Let me guess," Quinn said with a sigh, "Vampire slayer."

"The slayer actually," she clearly expected a far more sensational reaction to that because she sighed with annoyance when all they did was stare blankly at her, "Doesn't anyone know who the slayer is anymore?"

"No. Should we? Quinn's intimately connected with quite a few vampire slayers, no "the slayers" though," in any other situation, Ash would have gotten punched, but Quinn had more important things on his mind at the moment.

"Indeed," he replied frostily, "But I don't see why you'd want to slay us."

"Yes! We haven't killed anyone in a very long time and we're not planning on killing anyone during our visit. At least, we're not planning on killing anyone who isn't already dead," Delos decided not to think about how little sense that last statement might make.

The girl laughed, "Nice try. You're blood-sucking parasites. You don't just stop killing people."

"Well let's just for arguments sake assume we had, would we need slaying then?" Ash asked casually. The question wasn't genuine. They weren't going to talk their way out of this. Subdue the female and move on, that was their plan now.

Ash barely had time to register the fast moving shape approaching from the left before it hit him hard in the side and knocked him to the floor. Aside from the fact that this was possibly a threat to Ash's continued existence…no one embarrasses Ash Redfern this much and lives to tell the tale. He jumped to his feet and was just about to hit the shape back (it was in fact a short blonde man in a strange black coat) when the girl interrupted, practically jumping in the way, "Hey! You're face didn't go bumpy! Why are you not going bumpy like all the other vampires do?"

Suffice to say the interruption really took the wind out of Ash's sails and he let his fist fall back to his side, "Excuse me?"

"Why are you not going bumpy? Vampires all change when you attack them. It's the easiest way to tell if some one is a vampire or not."

Ash rolled his eyes, "We're Lamia. At least, Delos and I are. We're nothing like these…parasites."

"Lamia?"

"We're born vampires. Not made."

* * *

Kaoru had no idea what quirk of genetics had lead to him being related to Hunny, he thought that it probably involved some form of incest in the past. Incest on Hunny's side of the family because Hunny's existence was wrong on many levels. Honestly, what normal, self-respecting 18 year old boy actively encourages people to call him Hunny? Precisely. Therefore, when Kaoru's mother had announced that the plan was for him to spend the summer with Hunny and all his friends in America at a martial arts tournament…he was not impressed. Thank god for friends whose parents have enough money to send them to America just to save their friend from spending too much time with the Ouran High School Host Club. To say that Seishun Academy had an ongoing feud with Ouran High School was an understatement, so most of Kaoru's friends were perfectly happy to come along and those who didn't attend Seishun came purely out of friendship and summer boredom.

So that explained why there were two very disgruntled groups of teenage boys sitting in two groups on opposite sides of the living room of a very expensive hotel room in Los Angeles not entirely sure what to say to each other. "Maybe we should start with introductions!" Honey was either oblivious to the horrible atmosphere in the room or he was strategically ignoring it, "I'm Mitsukuni Haninozuka, but you can all call me Hunny!"

He finished speaking with a significant glance in Kaoru's direction. Kaoru might not be exactly fond of Hunny, but he was his elder cousin and that meant he deserved to be obeyed, at least a little bit, "Kaoru Kaido. I'm one of Hunny's cousins," he thought it was stating the obvious, but it was what was expected so he had to do it.

As it was now the host clubs turn to make an introduction, a tall, blonde boy spoke next, "Tamaki Suou" and after that the names flowed, going from group to group with little incident.

"Ryoma Echizen."

"Kyoya Ootori."

"Shusuke Fuji."

"Takashi Morinozuka. You may call me Mori. I am also Hunny's cousin."

"From the other side of Hunny's family," Kaoru had to add, he was not going to admit to being related to more of these people than absolutely necessary.

"Eiji Kikumaru."

The Ouran High School side included a pair of twins and they introduced themselves together, "Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin," which only left the last two of Kaoru's friends, neither of them were from Seishun and so were immune to the majority of the bad feeling,

"Shinji Ibu."

"Akira Kamio."

"Good! Now we all know each other we can enjoy our holiday!" It hardly needs to be said that Hunny's announcement was not created with universal smiles.

Unfortunately, their holiday was not to be enjoyable, but they weren't to know that for a few days yet.

* * *

"Born vampires? How can you be born a vampire? Vampires are dead they can't have children. Right Spike?"

"Yeah, right, never heard of any kind of vampire being born."

Ash sighed, "I think it's pretty obvious that there are different types of vampires. We're obviously just a type you haven't met before. We're Night World vampires, we keep ourselves to ourselves and try to not to associate with humans…something your vampires obviously don't do."

"But you said only you and Delos were lamia…so what's the other one? He must be a vampire like Spike then."

"Definitely not!" Quinn protested, "I don't go bumpy either. I'm a vampire made by the lamia, I'm like them. Three different types of vampire. The lamia, those made by the lamia and…those things."

"Ok. I can accept that," the girl nodded, "but it doesn't stop me killing you!" and up came that stake again.

"Wait! If you can accept that there are different types of vampire, then perhaps you can accept that we're not all evil bloody thirsty murderers and perhaps we can help each other," Ash was aware that they could easily win this fight, but he was equally aware that none of them wanted to kill the misguided human girl in front of them.

"Help each other."

"We're looking for someone. A vampire. He's broken our rules and been killing humans. You seem to know your way around here, perhaps you can help us find him."

Understanding was growing in the girls face, "A vampire like you?"

"Yes."

She lowered the stake for what would prove to be the last time, "I think I know who you're talking about. I think you'd better come with me."

"Buffy please! We can't bring everyone you meet in the graveyard home. I mean, how do we know they're telling the truth?"

"We don't. But considering who's been sleeping on my sofa for the last couple of days I don't think there's any danger," she hissed in response, hoping that the vampires couldn't hear her, she turned to them with a smile, "I'm Buffy. Who are you?"

"I'm Ash. That's Delos and Quinn. It's a pleasure to meet you."

* * *

Nidhogg was bored. All the prisoners had been sacrificed and now that Set had arrived everyone was pretty much occupied in plotting and planning the beginnings of the world take over bid so he didn't have that many people to play with. He'd decided that he may as well defer to Sets authority in some small way, he had agreed to help him and everything and Nidhogg did have a sense of duty and honour. It was just that he didn't often listen to it. So the end result of it all was that Nidhogg was bored and struggling to come up with amusing activities. It was so difficult; there wasn't much that was still interesting to him and even less that he'd never done before. So he went for a walk.

Nidhogg hadn't visited California for a very very long time. He had never really seen it in its current state, with people and buildings and things. In fact, the last time he'd been here it hadn't even been called California, it hadn't even been called America then, so really walking and looking around was pretty interesting for him. Especially seeing as his body wasn't ruled by the normal human needs for food and rest, he walked all the way to Los Angeles. It was a big city he'd been told and he was interested to be inside a city, it wasn't something he'd ever really seen before.

Los Angeles didn't disappoint. It was huge, but there was only so much to keep him occupied there and eventually he got bored and headed out to find something else to do, just outside the city he found some nice woods. Nidhogg liked woods. They were familiar to him in the sense that woods had always existed and always would exist, but he appreciated things that are rare and woods had become a rarity in the world these days. There was also the fact that Nidhogg spent his entire life living with one tree, the tree of life, and so he had a special bond with trees. He was satisfied to wander the woods until he had seen every animal and every plant that lived there and if anything more interesting to do should present itself…well…he wouldn't complain.

* * *

Hunny's martial arts tournament was only going to take up a tiny proportion of their stay and so they had to work out lots of activities that would keep all twelve of them happy. Considering they ranged in age from twelve to eighteen, barely knew each other and all had very different interests this was not proving easy, especially considering that certain members of the group were definitely starting to bug each other. Though to be fair, others were getting on exceptionally well. So today, they'd decided to go for a walk in some woods only a short way outside the city. No one quite knew who had suggested it, but no one had any particular objection to it and so they were wandering the woods quite happily. They didn't see anyone else until they'd been there for quite few hours, but that wasn't to last and eventually they met a boy.

This boy was around their age, if you take their age to be the average of their combined ages. He wasn't overly tall but he was extremely handsome with messy brown hair and very pale blue eyes. He smiled warmly as they met each other on the path, "Hello!" he greeted them in a friendly voice, "Nice day for a walk isn't it?"

Hunny, as the friendliest and also the best English speaker in the group answered promptly, "Yes it is! Nice and warm but not too hot. Nicer with friends though," he beamed, glancing at all the people round him and then staring sadly at the lone figure in front of them.

The boy shrugged, "Sometimes it's nice to be alone," he was still smiling, but the smile was taking on a more unpleasant quality. A kind of amusement, the kind of look a bored cat gets when it's looking at a mouse or a small bird and deciding whether or not to play with it.

"Yes…well…we'll leave you alone then," even Hunny wasn't immune to the air of coldness that was now spreading through the atmosphere, even he was feeling scared even thought he had no idea why or what there was to be scared of. Even if this boy was planning to try and hurt them or something stupid it was a case of one versus twelve, there was nothing to be scared of.

"Oh don't do that! I'm bored and I feel like I've been neglecting my job, you know, not living up to the name "Tearer of Corpses" I think I need to make up for lost time." Nidhogg loved it when the people who were about to die just looked at him like he was crazy, he loved how they weren't properly scared yet, how they thought they could win. Nidhogg wasn't taking pleasure in their pain and fear no really, he was just appreciating it, fear really was very under appreciated. It's one of the strongest and most powerful things that human beings can feel and yet we all try to escape it ignore it, not see it. Nidhogg really was just trying to put that right. So he wasn't going to kill them all.

He selected his victims, four of them at random, then he froze them all into place. The ones that weren't going to die were at least going to watch the rest and he thought it was very diplomatic of him to only kill one third of the group. Besides, they weren't really going to die all the way, they were just going into the afterlife and everything's far more fun in the afterlife.

Nidhogg did momentarily contemplate shifting into a form in which it was easier to eat people, like his dragon form, or may be a bear or perhaps just a big cloud of darkness, that one was always fun. Honestly though, he was just too lazy. He was going to stay human; he was just going to tweak his human form a little bit. It doesn't take much to stretch a mouth to extreme proportions and to grow finger nails and teeth that are sharp enough to easily cut through skin, muscle and bone. It doesn't take much when you're the very thing that created evil.

* * *

Giles really wasn't impressed when Buffy and Spike returned from a routine slaying mission with three people in tow. He especially wasn't impressed with her throw away explanation that they were, "Those funky vampires the prophecy was talking about."

"They're what?" he demanded as the group of five strolled casually into the living room. Well, Buffy was casual, the other four were extremely tense, especially Spike who was shooting murderous glances at the three newcomers.

"Funky vampires," Buffy repeated, "They're called l…l…oh shoot."

"Lamia," Delos filled in, "It means we were born vampires."

"That is impossible, Buffy you should know that."

"We thought angels were impossible but they're not. We didn't believe in aliens either and they exist. I think that in comparison born vampires aren't really so unbelievable. Especially considering they're definitely different. They don't go wrinkly."

Giles sighed heavily, "And why are they here?"

"They're looking for someone. A vampire they want to kill. I thought it might be our original vampire, the one who started this whole thing off."

"You've encountered Hunter?" Ash asked, sharply and instantly more focused.

"Not exactly," Giles explained, "We found one of his victims. It lead us to discover…a very worrying prophecy."

"Which would be?" Ash prompted.

"Well I don't think it concerns you."

"It does if it involves Hunter. He's Delos' great-grandfather, Quinn used to be his heir and he's part of my family too. If he's doing wrong it's our problem and he's ours to deal with."

"I think," a calm voice interrupted from the door way, "It's time for another meeting and time for a bit more explaining, don't' you?"

Giles sighed and nodded. Ever since he had arrived Raphael had taken charge. He never ordered, he never shouted or told people what to do, he simply suggested but all his suggestions were always carried out. Giles thought it probably had something to do with the fact that he was an angel who was standing in for God in heaven but he couldn't be sure.

They all gathered round the table, it was now too small to accommodate them all and several people had to stand, namely Spike, Michael, Kira, Jack and Xander. Everyone else was seated and the story was told again, from the beginning with the telling circling round the table until Ash, Delos and Quinn were the only one's who hadn't spoken.

"Now, you three can explain who you are and how this…Hunter…comes into all this," Giles turned to them and waited.

Ash decided it was probably best if he told the story, or as much of it as he considered relevant, "First to introduce ourselves. I'm Ash Redfern, that is Delos Redfern and that is John Quinn. We are all vampires. Delos and I are lamia and members of the oldest vampire family in existence. In fact, we are direct descendents from the second vampire ever to exist."

"Do you know who the first vampire was?" Buffy interrupted curiously

Ash smiled, "First vampire _is. _He's still alive. His name is Thierry Descouedres…he's a very annoying man. If this prophecy thing is as serious as you say you might meet him one day. Shall I continue?"

"Go ahead."

"Hunter is Delos' great-grandfather and probable one of the evilest lamia vampires in existence. Quinn was made by Hunter and was due to be his heir, but let's just say that didn't really work out. We're all members of what is known as the Night World. It's a world entirely separate to that of humans populated by witches, vampires and shape shifters. Our greatest rule is no contact with humans but some members of the Night World, Hunter included, were plotting to eradicate the world of humans and create a Night World that covered the whole world.

Needless to say it didn't happen. It was stopped and Hunter, well we thought Hunter had been killed. There are Night World people in this area and they heard that Hunter was around and they heard that he was killing. They reported it to Circle Daybreak and they sent us to capture him and bring him back for judgement…or to kill him."

"Circle Daybreak? What's that?" Giles asked, catching hold of the name.

"All Night people belong to one of three organisations. Circle Midnight is for the most evil witches of the night world. Circle Twilight is for the witches who are good but not too fond of humans. Circle Daybreak is for anyone who wants humans and the night world to exist side by side. Then there's the Night World Council, they rule most of the vampires."

"And you're members of Circle Daybreak?"

"Yes. All of us. We all want a peaceful co-existence between humans and Night people. If Hunters threatening that he has to be stopped," Ash paused and looked at his two companions, from their expressions he felt safe in saying what he said next, "And if these Goa'uld are threatening that too, I think Circle Daybreak would be very happy to join you in this fight."

Giles smiled, "Good. Right now, it looks like we might need all the help we can get."

And so the group grew. Buffy and co, the Gundam Pilots, SG-1, Angels and now Circle Daybreak were all preparing to face the massed ranks of evil together.

* * *

Shinji had no idea what had happened. None of them did. One moment they'd been walking in the woods with no one in sight and the next they'd been lying on the floor and Ryoma, Kaoru and Kyoya and Mori from the other group had been missing. The bodies, or what was left of them, had been found poorly concealed in foliage at the side of the path. No one knew what had happened, the police were so baffled they called in the Prventers and even they had no explanation for how all twelve of them could have been rendered unconscious and even less explanation for why only four of them had been killed.

It was of little surprise to any of them that they were not allowed to simply go back to Japan and leave the investigation to the preventors. It was quickly decided that their presence in the area was definitely required, considering they were the only witnesses and also very definite suspects. They were moved out of the city and to a smaller town in almost rural California called Sunnydale. This was where they were to live, in a reasonably sized house on a quiet street where it was hoped they could all stay out of trouble. If anymore children of exceptionally wealthy business men were killed in America it could cause quite the international crisis.

Of course, in the house next door there was a group of people preparing to face the biggest international crisis the world would ever face and it's presence was sure to mean they would do anything but stay out of trouble.

* * *

New guys!

Delos Redfern-night world

Ash Redfern- night world

John Quinn-night world

Mitsukuni Haninozuka, Hunny- Ouran high school host club

Kaoru Kaido-Prince of tennis

Tamaki Suou-Ouran high school host club

Ryoma Echizen- Prince of tennis

Kyoya Ootori- Ouran high school host club

Shusuke Fuji- Prince of tennis

Takashi Morinozuka, Mori-Ouran high school host club

Eiji Kikumaru- Prince of tennis

Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin- Ouran high school host club

Shinji Ibu- Prince of tennis

Akira Kamio- Prince of tennis

Hope you enjoy and please review!


	10. Hide and Seek

Authors Notes: I'm sorry! I haven't updated this in so very very long. I have no excuse. I am a bad person.

* * *

Chapter 9

Ash was happy to have Set back; he really was because when you spend several hundreds of years with someone and are then separated from them you tend to miss them out of sheer force of habit. Of course there were other reasons for Ash being happy to have Set back, Ash loved Set, he did and therefore he was glad to have him back. The only problem was that Ash sort of wished Set would give up on the whole take over the world thing. Sure, Ash had brought everyone together and promised them that the world would be taken over once they had Set back, but he didn't really want to destroy the world. All he'd wanted was to have Set back and he had known that to get people to help him he would have had to promise them something. That and Set was generally inclined to wanting to take over the world, which Ash happily accepted about him, but he just thought that Set should take a break and regroup, especially considering that trying to take over the world was what had landed him in the afterlife anyway. So really, Ash was happy to have Set back but there were several things he would quite like to talk to him about.

Not that Set was going to give him the opportunity to talk about it. Set wasn't really big on conversation, especially not with a person who really wasn't much higher in rank than a servant and as far as he was concerned had no intelligence and no right to tell him what to do. So Ash sat in the corner of the room sighing reflectively as he watched Set talking with Rosiel and some Cabal delegate about their latest plans. They'd been at it for days, trying to work out what the best plan for world domination would actually be. Nidhogg had refused his services; he'd yawned and said that though he could take over the world on his own no problem, it was far too quick, easy and not at all entertaining so they would have to sort it out themselves. Set had not been pleased but he realised that you didn't argue with evil and aside from a long angry rant to Ash later that night he'd ignored it.

"And are you sure this would work?" Set asked, critically, staring intently at the cabal representative who was almost shaking with fear.

"Yes."

"So why haven't you done it before now?"

"We didn't have the resources."

"And you do now?"

"Yes."

"What's changed?"

The cabal representative stared at Set, clearly wondering if he was joking, "Well, the war had a massive effect on the economic situation."

"Really?" Set looked genuinely surprised that a war would affect economics. Not surprising really, Ash wasn't entirely sure that Set actually understood any economic principles beyond the buy/sell level.

"Well, yes. Now that the war is over the entire munitions industry has been shut down, unemployment is rife and unemployment means there's far less money going into the economy, companies are worth less and are far easier to take over."

Set nodded, pretended he understood, Ash was probably the only person who would have been able to tell that he really didn't have a clue what the guy was talking about, "I see. And you think that to make a military take over work we'd have to have economic control of this planet?"

"Yes."

Set glanced over at Ash, beckoning him over with his eyes, "I'd rather stick with the tried and tested method. No one can argue once you've achieved military supremacy."

"It's been a long time since you've tried to take over a planet," Ash said. "Things have changed. You don't have a Ha'tak orbiting this planet; you don't have thousands of Jaffa waiting as an invasion force, the planet needs to be weak before you can make an impact."

"It is weak."

"They just fought an enormous war, they are armed to the teeth. Their infrastructure may leave something to be desired but they can all fight and they all will. This is Earth, not some insignificant slave planet."

Set glared, "I'm aware of where we are. But you have a point. I see that this planet is not the primitive place it used to be, their technology may now indeed rival ours and we must precede with more caution than we did in the past," he switched so that he was staring at the cabal representative, "We will do as you suggest. Dominate their economy and run them down until we control everything that could possibly be used to fund or create a military rebellion. We will succeed."

As the cabal representative left, Set beckoned Ash over. He left his corner and joined Set at the now empty table, he wondered if he'd over stepped the mark, Set didn't take kindly to having his plans criticised, "Ash, you may have brought me back from the afterlife, which shows dedication beyond that of any servant I've ever had before you and I'm thankful to you for performing your duty so thoroughly. But I know what I'm doing. I don't need advice from someone as truly insignificant as you."

Set dismissed him with a wave of his hand and Ash retreated. Yep, he'd over stepped the mark. Clearly, even resurrection wasn't enough to change the dynamics of a Goa'uld hierarchy. He was still the slave, Set was still the master and things were going to be done Set's way. Of course, Ash thought with a small smile, it would be things done Set's way but with the subtle influence of a slave who knew that really, at the end of the day, he was far more than a common slave. After all, they weren't doing this the tried and tested military dominance way, were they?

* * *

Akem Manah was pissed off. He was a high ranking demon! He had valuable skills! He was not a lackey who could be sent grocery shopping! His entire being rebelled against the injustice of it, he felt patronized, belittled and totally unappreciated. In any other situation he would have stood up for himself, he would have disembowelled some people, he would have refused and he would never have given in! Unfortunately, in this situation, the person who had ordered him to go shopping was Nidhogg the origin of all evil and every demon knew that you just did not disobey or defy Nidhogg. It just was not done.

Therefore Akem Manah was striding into the nearest grocery store with an evil expression on his face dearly hoping that someone would get in his way sufficiently to justify killing them in a slow and painful manner. He glared at the extensive list he was holding in his hand and tried to resist the urge to rip it up, which would be considered most defiant and probably result in his death. He didn't even know what some of these things were, he had no idea why Nidhogg thought the best person to go to a shop for humans and buy human things was a demon. Though that did raise the question of how Nidhogg knew what these things were.

Apples. Akem Manah knew what apples were. Now he just had to locate them in the shop, which he thought was probably easier said than done considering the size of the place and the bizarre labels hanging about the aisles were not helpful. What the hell was "world food?" Apple, fruit, he needed to find fruit, he could ask someone…he paused in his thoughts and just stopped himself from laughing, why ask when you can take? You see, that was Akem Manah's special skill, he could read minds, and not in the pathetic sensing a persons feelings way, he could actually hear peoples thoughts word for word. A very skilled witch could block him, but no one else even had a chance, all their thoughts were his the moment he directed his focus to them. On this particular occasion, he had no idea who exactly to focus on, so he threw his mind open and listened hard for any thoughts involving apples.

This method worked well, so well that the shopping trip proved to be far less traumatic than Akem Manah had thought it was going to be and he was getting through the list quickly and easily. Having his mind totally open to all thoughts was not usual and he normally only identified thoughts that he was looking for, having your mind swamped by thousands of pointless and chaotic thoughts can be distracting not to mention boring and disturbing and coming from a demon that is saying a lot. On this occasion, for the first time in a long time, he heard something he found mildly interesting and advantageous.

He heard someone thinking about slaying vampires. Now, this might not be considered something of interest by most people, after all there were hundreds of children around with a mild vampire obsession so a human thinking about vampire slaying wasn't really that interesting or unusual. What was unusual about this particular thought was that it was a serious thought and judging by the mental image thrown up by the thought, it was a real vampire. Akem Manah was intrigued, primarily because he didn't want to go straight back to the base just to annoy Nidhogg a little bit. Being late was not a sign of defiance, there was nothing wrong with taking his time, he hadn't been told to hurry, so he traced the thought. He traced it to a young man meekly following a teenage girl armed with what looked like an extensive shopping list.

These people were definitely not what Akem Manah had been expecting. The man was of average height and average build, no evidence of the strength required to fight vampires, he didn't look at all threatening and not at all in touch with the supernatural. He actually looked completely normal. The girl looked like an even less likely candidate to be involved in vampire slaying, she was small and slight with impractically long hair. She was more threatening than the man, but still, not exactly vampire slaying material. So, to find out more, he probed their minds, blocking out all the other thoughts surrounding him.

The man was called Xander and the girl was Dawn, they weren't in fact vampire slayers, Dawn's sister was. Not just a slayer, the slayer, which of course is a completely different league compared to just any old slayer. So the slayer was near by, that might cause problems if she found out what they were planning and decided to try and stop them and…oh dear…the mans thoughts were wondering and the thoughts were not good. It appeared that their house was currently very crowded, crowded with things like angels and snake fighters from the past and commando mercenary soldiers all crammed together so that they could fight the rising alliance of evil. Oh dear.

Akem Manah ran. Well, he didn't run, he moved quickly in a direction that would take him back to the base as quickly as possible where he would pick up all his possessions and terminate his employment with Set. Thanks but I have other commitments goodbye.

Akem Manah had naturally forgotten about Nidhogg. Nidhogg could read minds too, of course he could, and he was waiting for his minion to get home. The moment his minion got home he knew exactly what had happened and exactly what the minion was planning. Grinning manically, Nidhogg danced off to present Set with a new complication, just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm.

* * *

So the council was presented with a problem. A rather large problem in the form of a large and seemingly very organised resistance group about whom they knew almost nothing, except that it was being lead by the slayer who by all accounts was the worlds expert on thwarting evil plans. Set, if you could ever apply this term to a supremely evil Goa'uld, was stressed.

"How could this happen?" he demanded, stomping up and down in at the head of the table, "How could anyone find out about this? I want the person who let this be discovered found and I want them hurt and then I want them killed. Painfully."

"Unfortunately," Caleb began smoothly, "They're probably already long dead."

"What do you mean?" Set snapped.

"Chances are, some thing the size of what we're planning would have ended up in some kind of prophecy and seeing as the slayer seems to be involved and logically, her entire entourage will be as well, that means they have access to lots of books full of ancient prophesies about coming evils. You included."

"Earth prophecies about a Goa'uld? How dare puny humans make prophecies about their Gods?"

"I'd say that these prophecies would have been written long before the first Goa'uld ever set foot on earth. These are old prophecies born from old magic's, older than you, older even than the evil in me."

Set's face had been darkening gradually all through Caleb's speech, he turned to look at Nidhogg, "Is there a way we can resurrect whoever did it and kill them again?"

"Sure," Nidhogg shrugged, "Easily. But it would waste time and right now I think you need to be thinking about what you're going to do about this little resistance issue before it turns into a big resistance issue and I have to give you a helping hand again."

"Again?"

"Oh please. You don't think it's just coincidence that the one and only demon in our entire force capable of reading minds was in that specific grocery store at exactly the same time as members of the resistance, do you?"

"You knew," Set tried to keep the anger out of his voice, it's never good to get angry with the creator of evil.

"Knew is such a…mortal word," was the idle and infuriating response.

Set decided that the best way for him to protest was not to justify that with an answer. It was tragic how he, a powerful, supremely evil Goa'uld was being reduced to the level of a petulant child by something which looked like a petulant child. He was sure there was irony somewhere in that mix. He paced up and down at the head of the table, "We need to know more about these people. We need a spy."

"A spy?" Nidhogg grinned delightedly, "Good idea!"

Set ignored him, it really was the best way, "Someone needs to get in there. They need to be one of them, get them to trust them and find out what they know, what they're planning, how much of a threat they are. They need to find out everything they possibly can so we know what we're dealing with."

"Who, exactly, is going to be the spy?" Hunter asked, feeling like he might be pointing out the obvious, "Chances are, these people are going to know all about demons and vampires and how to recognise them. That means most of us are out of the running. Besides which, organised resistance? What are the chances this resistance is going to include people we've encountered? People who are going to recognise us and want to kill us."

"Leechy boy makes a good point," Nidhogg chimed in, "You're going to need a human who none of these people are going to recognise," he smiled and his eyes slowly slid round the table until they settled on someone, "Perfect," he hissed.

Light swallowed hard as all eyes on the table turned to look at him, "Me?"

"Yes, you."

Set looked at Nidhogg in confusion, "What makes him so perfect? Why not Tohma? He's human, totally human, Light is…dead."

" He was dead, but there's nothing to mark him out as anything but human, no special powers, plus he's young and harmless looking. Sure he killed thousands of people, but that was a long time ago, the wars gonna have wiped out everyone's memory of it, in this country at least. Plus, he knows way more about being a normal human being than any of us. It's gonna take way longer for people to get suspicious of him than of any of the rest of us."

Ash couldn't help smiling, "One day Nidhogg, you're actually going to stick to your word and stop helping us."

Nidhogg looked miffed, "Excuse me? Helping you? No way. I'm just playing with my toys."

* * *

Buffy sighed and spread her arms out, wriggling her fingers in true appreciation of the space. Her house was now crowded to say the least and it really did feel like she couldn't reach out without poking someone in the eye, patrols were now the only time she could get to herself and the only times when she could really spread herself out. She almost hoped she'd encounter a vampire or two so that she could give herself a workout and get rid of all the energy that was building up now that her basement had been turned into a bedroom essentially ridding her of any gym facilities at home. The pent up energy was starting to make her crabby and bad tempered. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no sign of any evil beings in the cemetery; it was disappointing to say the least.

With a sigh, she settled on top of a large stone grave and looked around. She was not moving until she got to kill something. Why couldn't the world give her something that would require a lot of kicking? A nice slimy demon with spines and claws, or a competent vampire with at least a hundred years under its belt. Not that she really objected to having all the nice, helpful, demon/alien killing forces in her house, they would be useful when the inevitable fight came. Oh who was she kidding, she really felt like her toes were being well and truly trodden on. She had to face facts, Michael was standing in for God, there was no way she could pull rank on Gods replacement, especially when he also happened to be the commander of the heavenly armies and had a few million years more experience in fighting evil than she did. Thankfully, Michael had shown no signs of wanting to pull rank, although Colonel Jack O'Neil was a completely different story and he really had an official rank to pull. Buffy really hated politics, a meeting of the world government probably saw less power skirmishes in a year than her kitchen had seen in a week.

And hello, that sounded like someone being beaten up. Buffy tried to remember that this meant that someone was suffering and in pain, but she couldn't stop herself smiling as she ran to investigate. She didn't have far to go, the noises were coming from the area just behind some trees, without the trees she would have probably seen the incident developing, as it was, she had to get very close before she could actually see what was going on. What was going on was quite unusual. There were demons, three of them, all big and spiny but sadly lacking in claws and they were fighting with- make that beating up, someone that was looking distinctly human. A young male human being beaten up by three demons, it was a little odd but it gave Buffy an opportunity to hit things, she could figure out the whys and how's of it later.

She didn't hesitate. Stakes were designed to kill vampires, but they are equally effective when firmly embedded into the back of a demon. The first demon fell which significantly improved the odds, two on one isn't quite as good as one on one but it's significantly better than three on one. Had the demons been slightly more intelligent there would probably have been a surprised lull as their brains actually took the time to register that they were being attacked, as it was a total lack of higher brain function proved to be an asset as the demons didn't think, they just did. One of them, Buffy gave it the name Spiny as it seemed to have significantly more spines than the other, lunged for her throat with its huge hands ready to throttle her. She ducked easily but Fatty, the other demon looked like it needed to go on a diet or exercise more, had somehow managed to get behind her and as she ducked and stepped backwards to prevent further attack from Spiny, Fatty's large, smelly arms closed round her chest.

Spiny almost seemed to chuckle as it advanced on her, arms held out in a zombie like pose, it probably wasn't thinking about throttling her anymore, it wanted to rip her head off, literally. Buffy struggled, waiting for Spiny to get close enough for her to throw her legs up and kick it in the face. As Spiny stumbled backwards, Fatty's grip loosened in surprise and she broke free, spinning round to deliver a kick to Fatty's head which sent him stumbling just like Spiny. Unfortunately, Spiny had recovered and was now going for a different tactic. The punch caught Buffy straight on the chin, she only just managed to keep her balance and return it, following it up quickly with another one, and another. Spiny shook it's head dazedly, Buffy saw her chance, grabbed the head, twisted and heard the satisfying crunch of a demon neck breaking.

That only left Fatty, if Fatty had had any higher brain function, he would probably have looked at what had happened to his colleagues and thought twice about attacking Buffy again. Unfortunately for him he had no higher brain function and lunged blindly, here, Buffy's higher brain function was an asset, she had a stake ready in her hand and the momentum of Fatty's charge found him impaled on it.

Buffy sighed, it wasn't exactly the strenuous fight she'd been looking forward to, these demons hadn't been strong enough or smart enough to present a real challenge, but she had gotten to kill them and that relieved a lot of tension. She felt that she could now quite easily go home and endure more of the endless bickering that took place between the Gundam pilots, more of Michaels fiery (literally) tantrums and more of the subtle power struggle between Colonel Jack O'Neil and Raphael. Jack really did have trouble with the whole, "he's an angel, he outranks you by default" thing. Anyway, returning to the matter at hand, Buffy looked around for the demons victim.

The young man was unconscious, lying on the floor a little way away from where Buffy had killed the last demon. At first, she thought he was dead, it was obvious that the demons had been using him as their punch bag for quite some time. He was bleeding heavily. Buffy sighed, she knew that she should probably call an ambulance, but there was no way she could do that with three distinctly un-human bodies lying around and it wasn't like she had a car or anything. She sighed again, her only option was to take the young man to her house, it was in walking distance and Raphael clearly had the skills to heal him far more easily than any doctor. "I'm sorry about this, we're going to a mad house."

The mad house received its newest arrival about as happily as, well, a mad house.

"What were you thinking?" Giles hissed, once Raphael had taken charge of the young man and was settling him on the sofa in preparation for the healing process, "We are preparing to fight a war, we can't take in every single waif or stray which crosses our path."

"Giles, he was being attacked by three demons. What was I supposed to do? Leave him there to die? We can't just stop helping people."

"We can prioritise. How would you feel if saving this one person resulted in the death of millions because you ignored the bigger picture?"

"About as bad as if I didn't save him and then the world didn't end. Of course, if things get that bad I doubt I'll be alive enough to feel anything about it," she sighed as Giles kept glaring at her disapprovingly, "Look Giles, he's badly hurt. Raphael can heal him and then we'll know what was going on. It won't take long to sort out. I couldn't leave him."

Right on queue Raphael called them into the sitting room to talk to the young man who was slowly waking up. He blinked a couple of times, face only showing confusion and fear, "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Well, my names Buffy, this is Giles and that's Raphael. He healed you. You were attacked by demons."

"Attacked? They were letting me go…"

"They were trying to kill you."

"No," he was talking slowly, trying to organise his own thoughts, "They took me. They kept me in a cell…a cave…they were letting me go."

"These demons kidnapped you and held you prisoner?" Giles asked incredulously, "Why?"

"I don't know. There were others too."

"Other prisoners?"

"Yes. I think…I think they killed them in some kind of ritual."

"You think?"

"I was taken about three weeks ago. I was kept in one cell the whole time and then, a few days ago, someone came into the cell…"

"A demon?"

"No. Not like the ones you found me with. He said that I wasn't right, I didn't fit, I wasn't what they needed to make it work. He said it was lucky that they'd gotten extras so they'd still have enough. Then today, those demons came, I thought they were going to kill me…"

Giles frowned, "And you have no idea what they were talking about? You don't know what the ritual was? Who the other prisoners might have been? Why you weren't the right kind of person?"

"No. All I know is that there were a lot of people there. Lots of different types of people, demons and vampires and sorcerers and things I can't even name. They kidnapped people and they killed them in some kind of ritual. I don't know why."

"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Giles asked coolly.

"Why would I lie?" was the simple reply.

"What's your name?" Buffy asked. She believed him; she'd seen how roughly the demons had been treating him. It wasn't a massive jump to believe that he was a surplus ingredient in some dark, demonic ritual and there was also that deep, nagging suspicion that this story of kidnap and sacrifice might be frighteningly relevant to their own battle.

"Light."

"Well…Light, can you excuse us for a sec? I need to talk to Giles."

Giles followed her out of the room, a little reluctantly until he realised that Raphael was sitting in the armchair watching the events quietly and would be perfectly capable of subduing their guest should be prove to be slightly more hostile than he seemed.

"Giles, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Buffy asked once they'd reached the dining room.

"Probably not."

"A large collection of nasty beasties, demons, vampires and unnameable things kidnapping people and using human sacrifice, does that sound familiar to you?"

"Should it?"

"Giles, maybe this is the alliance of evil forces we've been waiting for. Maybe this is the Goa'uld army."

"Oh god. The Goa'uld were wiped out, maybe this ritual…"

"Was an awakening."

* * *

Thanks for reading!

New guys: Well, Akem Manah is a real demon, Jessie researched him for me. He really can read minds, but he'll probably never turn up again so he doesn't really count as a character!


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